


Eyes Wide Open

by archea2



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Humor, M/M, Minor Injuries, Puns & Word Play, Romance, Undercover as Married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 15:15:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2656724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You. And Greg. The two of you. Married,” John proceeds to specify, as if Sherlock plus one were the sum to end all sums. “And now for my inspired guess. Case?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mildredandbobbin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mildredandbobbin/gifts), [NurseDarry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NurseDarry/gifts).



> A very, very belated gift for Mildredandbobbin and NurseDarry, in return for Mildred's gorgeous "PostCoital". I'm afraid your prompt ran away with me - it was so lovely I agreed to elope the moment I saw it!
> 
> As always, all my thanks to Grassle for her wonderful betaing and careful eye. I'm also grateful to the nonnies over at FFA who cheered me along when I posted snippets of this and helped with the, ah, technical details in chapter 6. During the four months it took to complete this, your support was deeply appreciated.
> 
> All the "cushion quotes" are borrowed from Shakespeare. I also owe the Muppets and Virginia Woolf a grateful nod.

_Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half-shut afterwards._

Benjamin Franklin

 

“You. And Greg. The two of you. _Married_ ,” John proceeds to specify, as if Sherlock plus one were the sum to end all sums. “And now for my inspired guess. Case?”

The Married Ones, eyeing each other across Mary’s nice batik rug, answer in one voice - so that Greg’s “Close enough” slots neatly into Sherlock’s “Not really”.

John chuckles. “Still sounding the part, too.”

“This calls for a drink.” Mary rises from her seat, pert and practical, crosses to the kitchen. “John, what’s yours? Shandy?“

“Not a case proper. A favour, and an extremely dull one at that. Mycroft’s idea of fun consists in spotting the murderer early on, then sending me to catch his worm for him.”

“Oh, like _Minority Report_?” (Mary, mixing the drinks.)

“Sort of. Minus the pool and the ping-pong balls.” (Greg, on the receiving end.)

“Well, my brother is hardly a sports fiend.“ (Sherlock, not untypically missing the point.) “But when rumour had it that Alf Björnson, the free-lance poisoner, had settled in England incognito…”

“Wait. The what?”

“Oh, John. Of course you know him. Chemistry nerd, specialised in sauces, dips and chutneys, very much the fashion-dish-sta. Once felled an entire Embassy with a tub of pesto alla genovese. They used to call him Three-Condiments Björnson in the C.I…” A flushed and voluble Mary checks herself. “In the C.I.D. Didn’t they, Greg? I’m sure I’ve heard you mention him before.“

“Oh, he’s an odd worm all right. And a dab hand at covering his tracks. I didn’t even know he was in England until Sherlock barged into my flat last Thursday and asked for my help. Well, I say asked…”

* * *

 

“Oh good, you’re starkers.”

As a prelude to his Saturday morning routine, these were alluring words. Or would have been two years earlier, when the routine still involved his wife instead of Sherlock Holmes in a pristine polo shirt and red (red?!) linen trousers, squatting on Lestrade’s bathroom tiles and all but gawping at Lestrade’s boxered groin. He had been cutting his toe nails when Sherlock had sauntered in, already Sundayed up, and hogged his bath mat.

“Stand up and turn round, please. I need to inspect your beauty spots.”

“ _What_?” Lestrade looked wildly round for a loincloth.

“Moles. And birthmarks. Oh, and I’d better record the full-frontal view, too, in case they give us a sex quiz.” A long inquisitive finger stole up and began to chuck the boxers under their waistband. Lestrade’s answering reflex nearly toppled him into the empty bath. “Mrs Hudson has already tutored me on miscommunication and its dire, dire consequences on a long-term partnership. Care to drop these?“

The next four minute were a tribute to Sherlock’s learning skills. At last, the psychotic-Swedish-chef-turned-Borgia-for-hire found its way to Lestrade’s ear – once he’d pinned two towels to his lap and used the third to flap Sherlock back into a less territorial zone.

Where he soon found himself packing a light case on Sherlock ’s instructions, listening to the Voice of Reason as it summarised the case at its usual rate of knots, pausing only to bitch on his wardrobe.

“Mycroft thinks that this man, this Björnson, might be currently hiding in Cynewald Hall. Heard of it? No, you wouldn’t have.” A glossy brochure was tossed, its cover picture a round tower encased in some sort of brick monstrosity, rose-pink and shamelessly phallic against the pure blue sky. “Place in Hertfordshire, early Elizabethan, old money come to no good so the present heir has taken to renting it for weddings and seminars and such jollifications. Very entre nous, offers to guide the chic elite in… Lestrade, I said chic, not _check_. Put that shirt aside – or better, put it out of its misery.”

”But I like it!”

“A lost cause, then” from the self-appointed arbiter of undercover elegance. “Where was I? In the more strenuous paths of life. Our man is the hotel’s chef, doubling as the cake decorating facilitator, only his class was full and Mycroft wants him formally damned or cleared by Monday. There was however one vacancy in another workshop, Relationship Counselling, which luckily enough happens to take place in the same corridor. Ergo, we’re now a couple in a bad patch – like those shoes of yours, incidentally. _When_ will you learn how to kick down a door? You need to stand closer and hit the vulnerable area just below the door-knob. You never target the knob, do you?”

“Nah, but you make it rather tempting to try.“

The loud chuckle took him by surprise. It made Sherlock’s gaunt face – too gaunt, never quite relaxed since his return from Limbo – look briefly, startlingly younger. Less of that mixed bag of hollows and shadows which, not so long ago, had pushed Lestrade to loop an arm round the ghost’s neck and – for the first time in their off-and-on, chalk-and-cheese friendship – pull him into a substantial hug. Less…haunted. _Oh_. Lestrade’s heart folded on a pang of warmth.

“Hey.” Softly spoken, until he had Sherlock’s clear gaze and could hold it to his. “Game on, kid.”

“It’s not a video game, Lestrade,” Sherlock griped, but he was still chuckling when Lestrade zipped his bag and followed him into the street. Then into the black Bentley Arnage double-parked superbly before the door. One of Mycroft’s, judging from the sleek, hard curves and the shaded windows. Interesting, that he’d have consented to part with his, well. _Exoskeleton_ was the only word Lestrade could summon, a tribute to all the video games he’d learnt to play when looking after his younger next-of-kins.

“Can I sit in front? If I ’fess up and tell you I’ve always wanted to push his buttons?“

Another chuckle. It left a ripple of good humour in Lestrade, as did the sight of Sherlock’s neck sinews loosening. Hmmm. There had to be a story behind the story of Mycroft siccing Sherlock on his elusive prey and Sherlock agreeing with none of his customary wailing and gnashing of teeth, but Lestrade knew better than to push for it.

He’d rolled the shaded window half-way down and was reflecting on their mission to come when the first niggle of doubt fell across his happiness.

“Say, what’s our cover story ?”

His query was met with silence and Sherlock’s puckered brow in the driver’s mirror. The niggle became a gnaw, sharpening Lestrade’s voice.

“Lemme see. You and Mycroft want me for the part, so I guess this is a – rehash of sorts. Using my past, are we?” Which put a whole new light on Sherlock needing him for the case. Not even a stand-in for John Watson, he. Just a guinea pig with an available story.

“I’m the old sad sack who can’t give you what you want, more time, quality time, in and out of bed. Have we made it past your first affair, or your second, or are we” – the words came effortlessly, his memory swirled and bitter – “finally on the mend if only I’ll be reasonable and go for a desk promotion, never mind the extra hours, so you can renew your posh gym membership?”

“What? No!” Sherlock’s voice was outraged. “That’s not a cover story at all, that’s your wife’s inane alibi for indulging her equally inane tastes. Please, there’s no need to stray from realism. You married _me_ for my brains, let us presume, so credit me with a modicum of those. Grey hair is a genetic fallacy, not a badge of senility. You’re an extremely handsome man and my co-worker. And even if I adhered to Gershon Longman’s sex credo, which I don’t, it would be very remiss of me to have you memorize his 3,700 positions. That’s _sex clutter_.”

And Sherlock waved Mr Longman’s statistics loftily out into the cool summer air. (The Bentley, it turned out, came with a folding roof. Other buttons had already delivered salted almonds, mint chocolates, an ivory pocket comb, and, to Lestrade’s vast delight, a series of cocktail umbrellas, all dated and signed by H. M. the Queen Mother.)

“Obviously, we’re in a bad place because I’ve proved thoroughly unsuitable as a partner. While I do indulge now and then, my libido is haphazard and unreliable, giving you ample cause for a suit of divorce. You feel crushed in your virility, cheated in your expectations of –”

“Come again?”

“That would be the point, yes.” Sherlock’s lower tones had gone starched. “My libido…”

“Yeah, I heard you. But that’s not realism, sunshine. That’s bullshit.”

“That’s not what I was –”

Lestrade pushed his shoulders back against the headrest and stretched his legs out, letting his knee knock Sherlock’s gently. “Then _they_ were bullshit.” He let that sink in before carrying on, pitting his voice against the engine’s swollen drone. “Sex is not – whatever they told you.”

“He.” Still those hushed, rigid tones. “It was years ago, Lestrade. Just a one-time…thing.”

“Well, he was a one-time prick. Who told you wrong. Because sex, well, sex is not just about getting one off in or on your fella. Or lady. Wanna know what I miss most about the wife?“

There were green fields left and right of them. And green trees, and the smell of water when the sun was highest. It felt almost as if they’d crossed into another plane of being, even with London at such close quarters. “Ticklin’,” he said. “She used to love it when I stroked her neck, just that, last thing at night. Said it made her - safe. Helped her to her sleep. Well, that was good enough for me.”

Silence. Lestrade checked the mirror again and coughed.

“‘Course, if you call me Garfield at the meet-and-greet, it’s a slap on the wrist for you, hubby.”

And there it was again, that curious, bone-deep, all-is-well-in-the-world sensation when Sherlock laughed. And now it was dappled with a softer joy because Sherlock had made him his confidant. A first, that. But there had been many firsts since Sherlock’s return, what with his own divorce and John’s marriage and Anderson’s change of heart and...yeah, line’em up and he’d toast’em all. So it made sense that their relationship would grow and evolve, too, play into that bright mosaic of change, that now involved Sherlock consulting him for a case – just the two of them, their own men and each other’s man for the next forty-eight hours.

He was circling the prospect with lazy curiosity when Sherlock’s voice came again.

“Well. As long as you’re with me on this.…”

* * *

 

“And you said yes, I take it.”

“ ’Course.” Greg takes another sip. “Ever heard me say no to that overactive mop? Then I packed a week-end bag and off we drove to that place – in one of Mycroft’s Leviathans, no less.”

“Oh, lucky you!”

“Mary lives for the day she’ll be kidnapped and taken for a ride.”

“Don’t forget the handsome bribery offer. _I_ could do with a week-end at a posh manor, with a bottle of Cochon-Rothschild or whatever they put in your room now.” Mary waves her glass about. “So tell us. Was it all brick and chic?”

Sherlock scrunches his nose, whether at his shandy or the reminiscence is hard to tell. “Oh, yes. Which made it all the more annoying to find that, instead of checking us in as MM. deVere, which was the initial plan, Mycroft had booked a deluxe room for…”

“…the Smokeses. He” – Greg jerks a thumb at his partner in crime – “was Bill Smokes.”

“And _I_ ’m supposed to be the resentful one,“ Sherlock mutters across John’s yips of laughter.

“So we had the resident lackey carry the bags to our room and headed straight to the buffet. Which doubled as the meet-and-greet. Which…did not go quite according to plan.”

* * *

 

“We’ll have to be quick,” Sherlock whispered as they made their way to the front lawn where a large marquee had been rigged up. “It’s past one already and we have our first session at two. Keep your eyes open.”

“For…?”

“Ears, of course. Shhh!”

There must have been a hundred people or so in the impeccable garden. Some wore badges impeccably aligned with the upper edge of their blazer pockets. An ambulating waiter with a tray paused in his track. “Sir…?”

Lestrade shook his head. “Nah, we’re fine. Ta. Er, that’s merci you, my good man. Keep moving.”

Sherlock sighed. “Those were pickled shrimps, Scotland Yard. I need a close look at _Björnson’s_ ears – Mycroft texted me his biometrics before I left to fetch you. There’s a fair chance he might have undergone facial surgery when he was still on the run, but the human ear is a cat’s-cradle of nerves and cartilages, and very little can be done to alter its shape. _Ha!_ ”

“Wait –” but Sherlock had already dived into the buffet zone. With his tennis shirt collar popped, the big tosser. Lestrade followed at a more sedate pace, trying on his new persona for size while he glanced left and right. Well-off, silvering, head of the game, married – look self-assured. On his way to explain his marital woes to a room packed with toffs – look self-conscious. And now he looked cross-eyed. Whoever did that, anyway? Not that Lestrade was much surprised, not with Anderson setting up a discussion group to examine Mrs A’s latest request for maintenance. On the Met’s Intranet, no less. Or Mrs Hudson’s scoop that she was buying 221D now that her autobiography, _Tea with the Mob: I Totes Married a Gangsta,_ was rocking the sales.

“Hullo! You must be attending the R.R. seminar.” Someone was patting his jacket sleeve.

“I –” _Relationship Rehab_ , Lestrade’s trendy-to-English inner dictionary provided. He turned. The lady was no longer young and had no visible partner in orbit. Maybe…

“Yea…s. Must be the self-conscious air, what? Giving me away.” Lestrade smiled. “Are you here for the, er… Cake Makeover Tutoring?”

She had a wrinkled face and a girlish hairdo, a simple braid thrown over her slim shoulders, and somehow the two struck an oddly nice match. The braid was held together by a blue elastic at its end, which she touched rather self-consciously as she answered.

“Oh no. I’m one of us, dear. I have an aura problem.”

“Aura?” Lestrade, who had missed breakfast, grabbed a plastic spoon on one of the floating trays and inspected it. It came with beets and fish eggs, and what looked suspiciously like custard on ice. _Jesus_.

“I’m Maisie Fisher.” The lady stretched out her hand. “I’m a colourvoyant.”

Lestrade shook it firmly, offered it the spoon. “Greg Smokes. I have a spouse problem.”

“Oh, you’re Bill’s husband? How lovely.” Maisie pointed to another green patch, where Sherlock was elbowing his way from one blazered man to the next. He looked disgruntled, his collar already sagging under the heat, though that might have been par for the part. “I should really have guessed. Your auras…oh, but there I go again. That’s the way trouble lies, at least with my children. They disapprove. Very much. Thomas is a vicar, you see, with a bishopric in sight, and his wife…”

“No, tell me. Er, pray.” It must have been the sun, Lestrade would think afterwards. Or the booze – they had run into Pimm’s or Pimm’s had run into them at some point. Or Sherlock’s limp collar, raising a fierce, idiotic impulse in Lestrade to cross over and prop it up again himself.

“Well, yours is orange shot with old-gold, simply gorgeous. Only…” Maisie frowned. “Only just now it is doing its best to flicker into green. Which is _very_ not you. Anyway. Bill…now Bill is a bit of a puzzle, isn’t he?”

“I should say,” Lestrade said. Feelingly.

“A Dodger Blue by birth, a very rare aura. But mutating. With a touch of the Himalayan poppy – he’s been on an emotional or spiritual journey recently. Have you two been summering in Tibet? I’m told the air over there is very pure, or perhaps the monks…hullo! Here comes Chef Gustav with the dessert trolley.”

Lestrade whipped round. So did Sherlock on his side of the lawn. Theirs were not the only heads to turn: the trolley might have made of sugar and spice and everything nice, but it was the trolleyman who pulled the audience. He was almost eight feet tall, eight and five if you made provision for the crowning glory that was his hat, an immaculate edifice pushed firmly down over his brow, his bland eyes – the blue irises gave off an eerie effect of trickling into the whites – and his ears.

 _Bugger_. Lestrade looked over to Sherlock, who appeared to be weighing the pros and cons of tripping the Cynewald star without looking déclassé. Lestrade shot him a cautionary glance. “Red alarm,” he growled under his breath.

Surprisingly, it was Maisie Fisher who nodded. “Red Devil, they call it these days,” she chipped in. “A _most_ uncommon shade. Did you spot it too? I…forgive me, I think I’ll just go inside and look for a chair.”

“Are you all right?” For Maisie had certainly turned several shades paler. Lestrade leant toward her while in the corner of his eye, the chef took a wide bow, all hat and no face; then took a step back and retreated, a target moving out of sight for now.

“The heat, I’m sure,” Maisie gasped. “Though I’m keenly receptive to… Ah, here’s Kiwi. My son’s wife. Can you take me inside, Kiwi dear? It’s nearly two, after all. This is Greg, Greg Smokes. One of us. I think he has the Gift.”

The stiff-spined woman in the Laura Ashley blouse gave Lestrade a bright unimpressed smile. “Kimberley Winifred Fisher,” she said, driving her unspoken point home. “Shall we?”

“ ’Course,” Lestrade said. “What ho,” he remembered to add before he steered them towards the main entrance, against his stomach’s better judgement.

Hungry, yeah. Not half. Only…not just. As they joined up with other workshop attendees, he caught a glimpse of Sherlock’s dark head and white neck, towering above the indefatigable shirt collar, once again arched like a sail. Lestrade swallowed. For a man who had just skipped lunch, he felt as if he had bitten off about as much as he could chew.


	2. Chapter 2

 

“M-wee?”

“That’s Tillyspeak for ‘And then?’”. Mary appears in the doorframe, the baby hitched snugly between her hip and elbow. “Did we miss much?”

“The name of this child,” Sherlock informs the room at large, “is Matilda Sherlock Watson. Or so I was told at her christening, and I see no reason to squeeze it into this...cartoonish alias. But no, you didn’t miss anything. That wasn’t a significant part of the case.”

“Bugger significant, it was hilarious. Bugger it with a…”

“…ugga?”

“It’s shandy without beer for you from now on, John Watson. And I want to hear about the fun part.” Mary crosses to Sherlock’s seat, leans forward to take his glass and, in one clever arc of motion, swoops the half-awake child onto his lap, pacifier and all. “Over to you, Greg.”

“Well, I was just telling John how we herded ourselves into the Macbeth Room…”

“ _Seriously?_ ”

“…yeah, the Cynewald has a Shakespeare theme. Could have been worse. Could have been the Othello Room, as Doctor Sam said – that was our facilitator, bit of a celeb but very nice. The cake makeover-ers were next door, in Measure for Measure.”

“I’m _so_ taking notes,” John warns. “Here.” He lifts a finger, gives it a one-eyed inspection and taps his nose pointedly.

“Sherlock sat near to the door, so he could keep an ear on the corridor. I sat next to him, so I could keep an eye on Billy the Kid. Then Doctor Sam took the floor, said hello, took our names, and offered to warm us up with a lecture on the Science of Love.”

A double sniff from Sherlock’s chair. The baby is fully awake now.

“Yup, somebody had his hopes shot right down,” Greg laughs. “I think he really expected Sam to produce a bunch of electrodes and walk the rounds matchmaking between our blood pressures or something. But no, it was all _communicate, communicate_ , with a sweet little bit about breaking the dam of silence to…”

“…release the life-giving river of speech and water the seed of relationship. As I said, irrelevant. All you need to know about rivers, Matilda, is that they have been known to carry an adult corpse seventy miles further away from the crime scene. Only an idiot would trust them with a _seed_.”

“Wait, you actually listened?”

“I happen to favour the Stanislavski method,” Sherlock answers John loftily.

“And then, well, she turned to the first couple on her left, and we all knew it was Screw Your Neighbour time.”

“Oooh, the fun part.” Mary nods. “Shoot!”

* * *

 

The man on Sam’s left had gold-rimmed spectacles, a brown tweed suit with a matching silk tie, and the pink-and-white, strawberry-and-milk, peaches-and-blancmange complexion found in babies, a few toddlers and Oxford’s Emeritus Professors. He had introduced himself as Roper and his wife as Gina. He was still talking. She was rubbing a fingertip to the glossy oak of the tabletop, her eyes lowered, one arm hanging slack at her side.

“I don’t hold with single-mindedness. In fact, as I was telling Gina only this morning, our couple probably made it through all these years because I have always insisted on the necessity to engage with new attitudes. Engage _and_ debate. No, wait. Make that verbalize.”

“That’s good to hear, Roper. So perhaps Gina can –”

“Hence my idea that we should carve a twenty-minute niche in our morning routine to verbalize free-style. Starting at 7:40 and ending at 8 sharp, before our eggs and bacon. I went on to suggest that we tell each other the previous night’s dreams, chapter and verse, no holds barred, and parse them using Jung’s theory of the animus. It worked beautifully for me. Gina, I regret to say, said it gave her a headache. No, wait. Make that the megrim.”

“Right. Gina, what about taking it over from –”

“But I wouldn’t give up. Not I! Next we tried coordinated tantric breathing, though I had to call an end to that on account of my asthma. I suggested therapy. I suggested that she take up her doctoral thesis again – we had her research bases pretty much covered when she dropped out. Then I read your ad. Well, as I said, Sam, I’m always receptive to new approaches. Anything to make her brain happy. So we talked it over and Gina said she’d give it a go. No, wait. Make that a chance. Meaning, of course, that she’s delighted at the prospect to exchange –”

“No, she’s not. She’s giving you a chance to find out about the other man.”

Lestrade froze. So did half of the table, propagating the shortcircuit effect. Only the woman, Gina, lifted her head – a creased little face, her dark grey eyes as unreadable as Sherlock’s diagnostic – and looked at the interloper. 

“I _beg_ your pardon?”

A sudden move, a white flash-still: Sherlock’s hand had landed on Gina’s wrist. The gesture looked, but wasn’t brutal; it was simply, unimpeachably exact.

“Look.” Sherlock’s voice wasn’t brutal either. “She’s wearing a cufflink on her left wrist. And the right? Buttoned, like the front of her shirt. I spotted the difference the moment she entered this room. You didn’t, and you have been at her side all day long.”

“Sher… _Chéri_.” A kick would be too pleb, Lestrade reasoned with himself, but he could always sneak his own thumb and finger under the table and give Sherlock’s hip an undercover pinch. Put some welly in it, too. “Cut it out, what?”

Sherlock, of course, carried on as if he’d been handed a blank cheque by Cupid.

“And what a cufflink. A silk knot, yes, but not your average monkey’s fist. A double loop, with a curious twist to it, and – hullo, do I hear a sailor’s knot? Ah, Mrs Fisher the Younger. No, not even close. Better tell the Vicar about those football pools, by the way, he won’t mind a bit; in fact you’ll make it easier for him to confess about nicking your halter blouse for the Easter cross-dressing. It’s not his fault if he misread the Archdeacon’s invite.”

“Bill, we should really let Gina –” Yeah, Doctor Sam was probably rueing her break-the-dam pep talk at this stage.

“Communicate. Yes, Doctor, I know the mantra. I had it hammered into me when I was fifteen, by people with a hardcore fetish for their own saliva.” Sherlock released Gina’s hand and spoke to her in a voice that was nothing like his usual scalpel staccato. “Gina. Do you want to tell him yourself, or shall I do it for you?”

A ripple of unease bobbed around the table, side-ebbing Lestrade who sat grim-and-red-faced. It stopped at the tiny nod from the woman.

“A true lovers’ knot. There’s someone else, isn’t there? And he’s keeping the other link? Yes, I thought as much. But it hasn’t gone very far yet, this thing you have, and you’ve been wavering. Unhappy, but wavering.”

Even in mid-afternoon the Macbeth Room was split between day and dark, its high windows filled with the brilliant summer air though it fell squarely in between the wooden panels turned shadowy with age and dark polish, and tapestries with forest scenes of browns and russets. It came with a shock to Lestrade when Sherlock stood up and the whole room seemed to tilt towards him; to adopt him as its new pole of gravity while he spun on the frail, tragic truth, the daylight gathering around his tangle of dark curls and his ruthless tale.

“Then Roper told you of his plans to come here, and you had an idea. Because _you_ are the clever one. Oh yes, you are. So you cut and sewed another hole in your cuff and wore another man’s gift, not proudly but in plain sight. Telling yourself that if Roper could see it, could read the sign of it and ask you – that if Roper could, just once in the entire course of his life, listen to what you had to say – there was still a chance for him and you. Well, he didn’t. You put your hand on the block an hour ago, and he’s still consulting with his animus. Roper, old boy? Want to take it over from here?”

Slowly, steadily, Roper pushed his chair back. His cheeks were puffed as if he’d stocked them with all the air he could draw in from the room, but couldn’t make up his mind between inhaling it or blowing a raspberry. And they were still puffed when, with the same organisational ire, he righted his glasses, grabbed his leather satchel, rose and, not looking at his wife, walked out of the Macbeth Room.

Thick, thick silence. Thick enough that you could cut slices out of it, Lestrade thought, and sell them a tenner apiece to…yeah, whoever liked silence. Shrinks, likely. And nuns. Headmasters. Those City nerve-cases who couldn’t go to sleep unless they first listened to crickets boffing their missus under the rain. (He’d been one of them at the time of his divorce. Been there, done that, got the CD. Only, the rain sounds had made him go to the loo. And was the cricket boffing his own missus or Mrs Long-legs-next-door? Yeah, the CD hadn’t been a success. )

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” he exploded. This was met with a curt hiss from the Fisherzone, but Lestrade was way past caring. He had told Sherlock to stop and Sherlock hadn’t. And now Sherlock was radiating satisfaction like a glowstick in a night op. “Proud of yourself, are you?”

Sherlock’s eyes met his, unperturbed. “Problem, dear?”

God, yes. Because, because…because Lestrade couldn’t look that poor woman in the face, for one – her secret outed, her marriage busted, in all likelihood, and yet Sherlock would have forgotten all about her in a few hours. She wasn’t important to him; none of them were. And it maddened Lestrade, drove him well past his Sherlock threshhold as he used to call it fondly. Blew his usual prickle of annoyance into a red-hot itch. Not the prying itself, because Sherlock couldn’t help it and Lestrade knew and accepted that. But the indifference with which he looked into a human heart, struck his light, and then turned away from the people he’d hurt as if they were dead matches _._

“Two years ago,” he said rashly, the words outed too, from the deepest recess in his heart. “Christmas Eve. Remember? When you told that poor sod his wife was making a fool of him? Never even lifted your eyes from your laptop, not you. Well, it’s just the same. It’s… It’s… You can’t. Just, you can’t. Embarrass people like that.” _Grieve them_ , he told the unrivaled eyes. _By not seeing them. Not caring to see me_.

And then – “No,” and just like that, the silence was broken. It was the first time they’d heard Gina speak, and Lestrade was astonished at the resolve in her voice. The clarity on her face, too, that was not just the bright light pouring in from outside.

“No, it’s all right. I – I’ve let myself get all muddled up, really. And Roper…well. I’ve tried to talk to him. I knew it was the right thing to do, but…it’s just not possible to tell Roper something unless it’s something he’s told you first, you know? So I guess I just needed someone to interpret for me. Just this once. Now I can do it myself. And I will.”

She glanced over to where Doctor Sam sat, searching and finding courage in the other woman’s smile. “And now, I have to talk to... someone else. So I – I’ll just let myself out. Good-bye – and thank you. With all my heart, thank you.”

The last words were for Sherlock.

A new ripple went around the table, almost truculent with relief. It no longer bobbed: it bubbled. Suddenly, shamelessly, every dam was bursting. People raised their thumbs at Sherlock, asked if he held séances, did it with mirrors, charged anything for annoying bosses and mothers-in-law. From now on, Lestrade saw, Sherlock would be – if not their white knight in wolf’s clothes, at least their sweet oddball. Even Maisie Fisher diagnosing Roper as a Wormhole Green was not enough to dampen Sherlock’s audience appeal.

Sherlock, who…had not said a word, Lestrade realised. Was still standing up, his FEELINGS NO PASARÁN face well in place, although his underlip was pushed out, making his chin stiffer and the rest of his face tenderer. To anyone else it would have looked a sullen face but Lestrade knew from experience how to read the childish combination.

Sherlock was embarrassed. And Lestrade didn’t think it was because of the situation, or the odds that he might have busted his cover. Oh no.

“Good for the girl, I say! She’s well out of it.”

“Poor kid. She was lucky you were here for her, Bill.”

“Hear, hear. He got her out of a rut all right. Didn’t he, Sam?”

“ _QI_ ’s answer to us lonelyhearts, are you, lad?”

Lestrade’s gaze fell to his left hand. There was a ring on it. Not his, which lay at the bottom of the Thames where he had cast it on a long-ago Boxing Day, after that final, scalding phone call to Dorset. This was just a costume prop, tossed into his lap by Sherlock the moment he had entered the car, and it had felt almost unnatural to slip it on. As if the first one had slipped his memory, even though he had slept in it for, what, fifteen, twenty years? and it had left a pale ghost of itself on his tanned naked hand, when Lestrade had first taken it off. But the tan had gone, and _naked_ had felt like a beginning, then. A rebirth. All because of Sherlock.

“Bill,” he whispered.

But Sherlock, stiff and tender, stared ahead.

“ _Chéri_.” Lestrade leant forward and pinched – his hand this time, a mere tweak, half tease, half touch. Their rings were touching, too, gold to gold. True gold, came to Lestrade in a lightning clue. Hence the strange, soft-heavy, familiar feel when he had slipped it on in the car. Had Mycroft, their case sponsor, bought them on his admittedly vast funds? Or... “I’m sorry I yelled at you. It was wrong and stupid of me, and – yeah, stupid and wrong. Forgive me?”

Because Sherlock was not always nice, was anything but a bed of roses, could in fact be a proper thorn in the arse – but whatever else he was, Sherlock had got him out of a rut.

“It was.” And Sherlock, ever the bigger tease, was smiling. “But that’s why I married you, after all, so I could be right for the two of us. It does wonders for my morale.”

“Nah, that was for my professional address book.” Lestrade tipped him a rakish smile. “Best network in Westminster, me, hands down. What,” he remembered to add.

“Such low self-esteem, my husband.” Oh, and now his hand was being – taken, yes, and – a soft, secret little hum, as Sherlock’s mouth dipped to kiss the naked palm. In full public view. Lestrade felt a blistering tide of self-consciousness engulf him, up to his ear-tips. “My partner in crime. My Guy.”

Sherlock paused, sensing a hitch. “Gerry.” He turned back to beam victory at his new fanbase, met with a few perplexed glances and tried again. “G…”

“Greg.”

“Greg?”

“Greg. _Greg_. Greg!”

As in the old wizarding tales, the door opened on his third yell. An owlish young man popped his head in, peered at Lestrade, then opened the door wide to wheel in a pastry trolley with a gigantic silver teapot. Sherlock’s still dubious “...Greg” was lost in a flurry of shuffling feet and smacking lips as their audience moved towards their four o’clock snack.

But Doctor Sam, bless the woman, had spotted an overture for herself.

“This is quite interesting, Bill. You find it difficult to remember your husband’s given name?”

“Yeah, he’s always like that.” And now the hitch was in Lestrade’s voice, because _always_ had just stretched out to cover _undercover_ , and didn’t that speak volumes on his self-esteem, knowing that Sherlock couldn’t be arsed to remember his name for one of his _cases_? Sherlock, who had just gone the full emotional monty in public, calling him…yeah, and kissing his…oh, yeah. Only to make a mockery of his name again.

“Well, _you_ call him Sherry!”

Ah. Looked like the fanbase was rallying again. Not only that – they were treating Sherlock to sponge cake and Bakewell tart, piled on a plate for him by the more zealous among the Science of Love bros. Votive offerings, perhaps. Or an advance payment for their own happy ending.

“Greg.” Doctor Sam’s voice was its neutral, benevolent self. “How does this make you feel? Insecure? Neglected? Unloved?”

“Unff!”

Un-bless the woman, Lestrade thought, wheezing and choking on a mouth full of cake. Why did she have to – Christ. It’s all play, came the late reminder. Well, it was. Was it? With all the cracks in their façades? With him about to come clean – _ha_! – to Sherlock Names-Are-Not-My-Area Holmes? ’Course it was. All play and all work, with that one grain of truth thrown in, that Lestrade could no longer takee out now. All right, then. All right. Play it again, Sam.

“All of that. Sort of. I mean, I know it’s just, it’s, I know it’s hard-wired in him, that capacity to. Forget the small things, the unimportant...yeah. It’s just – it makes me feel I’m taken for granted. Unnecessary. Bit like –”

In the high-walled, high-ceilinged room, the next sound was like a little deflagration. A Sherlock-made noise: he had just slammed his palm to the table, hard. His free hand, since the other was still wrapped around Greg’s.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Sherlock looked from him to Sam and back to him as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “You don’t actually think I’ve forgotten your name?”

“Your best friend has a four-letter name! His wife too! And then there’s Molly, and Don…don’t forget my associate at work! You never muff those, Einstein. But mine? Every time. _And I’m your sodding partner!_ What am I supposed to think? _”_

“Greg.” Sam again. “Have you thought of asking Bill why he acts as he does?”

Lestrade shook his head. No, he hadn’t. For the one simple reason that he – oh, hell’s sodding ding-dong bells. Didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Greg.” Sherlock shoved his chair back and started pacing to and fro behind their seats, holding on to Lestrade’s hand. Lestrade swiveled along the best he could to avoid dislocating his shoulder.

“Of course I know what you’re called. But I also know you hate your name. Have always hated it.”

“ _What_?” Lestrade thought he could hear a faint echo of “What, what?” at his back.

“I heard you tell John about it. About trying to get the boys at your school to call you Gregory, then giving up when they took to calling you Gory Rag instead. It is true I haven’t struck lucky yet, but I’ve spent two years storing options and we haven’t even started yet on the Iraqi and Tibetan fund. I’m rather fond of Gilgamesh myself, but of course, you, the rightful owner, would have first semantic pick. Really, Greg. I thought you knew me better than that.”

* * *

 

“Holy moniker, Batman!” John’s eyes are humid with laughter. “Was that the pub night? No, wait. Make that _the_ pub night. When we frogmarched him to the Cask  & Glass for a quick one and got thrown out at four? After he’d dipped his dart in my dry gin for antisepsis and tried to stab himself for science? Oh what a night!”   

“Yeah. You’d just told me about your Boy Scout days – that must have been your fifth – and that your totem name was…”

“Don’t!” comes in one voice from John’s lawful wife and John’s best friend. “The pool’s still open.”

“Only for one week.” John grins to himself. “And then, I’m off nappy-fatigues for all of next month _and_ I get to write about the Presbury case. The one where Sherlock had to rent a monkey suit.”

“I’d take over. The nappies, I mean. Gladly.” Lestrade’s eyes are on the baby, who is displaying all her family traits as she lures Sherlock to bend over her with a sweet little chirrup, only to grab two handfuls of hair in her round fists and lever herself up on her feet, grunting with the effort.

“Anyway. As I told Sherlock, I really appreciated his concern but that was forty years ago and the big boys no longer give me grief. Kids get funny over names at school. And not a little cruel. He said he knew. I…” But gravity is getting the better of young Tilly, plumping her back slowly on her little bottom; Lestrade darts across the room to steady her up. He is rewarded with a jelly of soft coos and smiles and Sherlock’s own one-sided dimple, as he turns Matilda slightly on his lap to let her face her new devotee.

“And then?” John asks after a beat. Several, in fact.

“I – guess the session went on. Can’t say I paid much attention. Sherlock?”

“Mmmm? Oh, I dare say. My mind was elsewhere.”

“But what about the case? Come on, you two, gimme! Did you see the giant chef again?”

“Sure we did.” Lestrade is laughing too now, encouraging Matilda as she pats the detective’s cheeks and strong Greek nose solemnly. “Both our workshops ended at the same hour, so we made a dash outside to witness his exit. And, man, he was just as much of a sensation as we’d been over there.”

“As _I_ ’d been,” Sherlock edits in slightly nasal tones. “Deservedly, too. _I_ had deduced an adulterous cufflink – he had stuck a marzipan orchid on a cupcake. Hardly a feat in my book.”

“Hush, Capricious Cricket. Anyway, he was surrounded by his own attendees when we saw him, men and women, all of them lifting glittery cakes in their joined hands and praising him as the one and only cook on God’s green earth.”

“‘He puts the crumpet in scrumptious’,” Sherlock quotes from memory. “What does _that_ even mean?”

“I thought we’d try and take him aside, offer to interview him or something, if only we could persuade his clique to let go of him. But trust Sherlock to take the shortest route.”

John and Mary, who have spent the previous minute exchanging significant glances, lock gazes once more.

“He didn’t –” Mary begins.

“Of course he –” John starts.

“‘Course he did. Walked up to the man, scattering silver confetti right and left, gave him a nice show of teeth and said, ‘I’ve heard your pavlovas are to _kill_ for’.”

“It’s Lestrade,” Sherlock explains over the concert of groans. “His puns are atrocious, and they tend to stick after a while.”

“And then, in case he hadn’t driven his point home: ‘I wonder if I could have your opinion, as a gustatory scholar, on Nigella’s Death by Chocolate?’.”

“That was for Mrs Hudson, actually. She tends to overdo the Kahlua –”

“ _Sherlock_.” The dramatic suspense is getting too much for John, or perhaps a psychosomatic high induced by the mention of the rich cocoa-coated chocolate cake. “Five hours into a stakeout, and you deliberately tell a potential killer that you’ve spotted his game?”

But Sherlock only smiles, the Siamese cat’s smile which makes his Siamese blue gaze all the bluer and slant-ier. “Communication, my dear John. To quote our own Doctor Sam – a little of it can go a long, long way.”


	3. Chapter 3

The picnic was non-negotiable, Lestrade had informed Sherlock, unless the latter wanted a say in their choice of sandwich fillings. He (Lestrade) didn’t give a fuck if their suspect was currently bolting, or even Bolting, a gigantic blond Usain, even as he spoke. Mycroft Holmes was their M and Q, and Lestrade was fairly sure that Mycroft had a number of traps, springs and nets spread out in the lush Hertfordshire countryside. Put Mycroft in charge of a certain garden and he'd have bugged every appletree to be on the safe side. Probably tutored the Serpent in the fine art of narking, too. Meanwhile, he (Lestrade) wasn’t touching the hotel food with a ten-foot pole, not after Sherlock’s _brilliant_ repartees. Oh, and Sherlock was out of livebait zone, too. Caesar salad for two, not open to discussion.

Sherlock, much to Lestrade’s surprise, had followed him to the nearest village shop, then on to a grassy knoll overlooking a nice stretch o’ water ("gnat nursery" – Sherlock). It was only a few yards from the Cynewald’s bulky presence, but with the crickets’ songs, and the evening’s barley sugar light, and those yellow bits that were probably called Little Buttercups or Sweet Celandines ("creeping ragwort" – Sherlock), it was…nice, yeah. More than. Peaceful and drowsy, like the scent rising from the gold-green grass, and – lovely? No, because lovely was all Sherlock, his long form stretched out among the ragwort, eating the large lettuce leaf that Lestrade held for him. He had selected it before dressing the salad and waved it over the too-pale face for a joke, punkahwallah-like, only to go still when Sherlock had raised his head and begun to nibble at it. With tender little motions of lips and teeth, until his lips were only a kiss away from Lestrade’s fingers.

Funny, how today had been all about change. Change of air, change of dress. Change of attitude. Well, he’d had two years to prepare for the last, and put the years to good use. Sherlock too, it seemed. God, just the thought of him thinking of Lestrade all that time he’d been away, exposed, out of touch – _oh_. Lestrade started at the nip; looked down at Sherlock’s raised eyebrow, and slowly, aware of the idiotic smile on his face, dipped into the plastic bowl for another leaf.

(His handler. Huh. Sherlock had called him that once. Long ago, when Lestrade’s vision of domesticity hadn’t included hand-feeding a tall, pale genius with a kamikaze streak. And a few clover leaves in his curls.)

 _I want this to go on_ , came the calm, fierce realisation. It left a strange undertow of feelings, as if a deep-buried part of Lestrade ached for this even while he had it, bringing back memories of his heavy-smoker days, when he’d sometimes craved a drag even while he was drawing the smoke into his lungs. Only now it was the urge to be as they were now, mornings and afternoons and nights and _years_ – a true ending, no longer a false premise.

Closing his eyes briefly, Lestrade groped for the touch of his friend. Here, in the flesh. Warm and close. Not going anywhere - and that worked two ways.

"Of course he isn’t going anywhere."

Ah. Must have said that out loud.

"Björnson is a homicidal maniac with a delusion of grandeur. If he has a fixed agenda, with Sprinkles 101 in the morning and poisoning the entire borough at five, he’ll kill us before he allows us to tamper with it. In fact…" And Sherlock was his vertical self again, sitting up in the grass, his mind knocked alert by Lestrade’s incautious remark. "In fact, if this man _is_ Björnson, he’s bound to pay us a visit tonight, once he’s released from his kitchen duties. Quick, Greg! We have to go back and strategise!"

Yeah, so much for the joys of pastoral languor. But Sherlock’s face was alight, literally shining with excitement (and the tiniest smudge of Caesar dressing), and Lestrade’s heart grew in cheer at the sight.

The cheer simmered to a glow, a warm static of excitement as they headed back to the big brick-and-brawn mansion, then to their room. The Cynewald’s first floor, which they acceded via a large stone staircase, disdaining the rickety lift, was a long, narrow corridor, only partially lit by rare wall-sconces. Once, it had once been a long, wide gallery where the Cynewald children used to lead their ponies up the stairs on rainy days, a detail enchanting to Lestrade when he had read it out to Sherlock on their own ride to the place. Their room lay mid-corridor, a good vantage point and an odd mix of sparse and deluxe, its ceiling way too high for its walls; there was only one towel apiece in the bathroom, and those cellophaned soap pebbles that smelt of baking soda and army regulations, but the silk coverlet on the huge bed looked genuine and much too beautiful for daily use.

All this he observed quickly, while they groomed the room against their midnight visitor. Well, Lestrade did. Sherlock’s contribution to the Masterplan had been purely theoretical, though his gaze, rapt and silent, followed Lestrade’s every move as he pulled back the coverlet and sheets on their bed.

 _Their bed_. Now ripped open and rumpled, its tight-tucked sheets as thoroughly debauched as they might have been after… _fuck_. Lestrade forced his gestures to push past the hot flash-still in his head, kept them brisk and professional as he flapped the sheets to dislodge the many pillows. Eight, not counting the long bolster: ideal props for the sleeper dummies intended by Sherlock.

Sherlock who...had materialised between the bed and Lestrade, bending idly over to pick a cushion and read its motto, his thighs taut and slightly parted, his head hanging. But it was Lestrade who fet the rush of blood front-face, met it squarely and let it burn its mark in at the sight before him. God, those red trousers must have been made of stretch material and such stuff as wet dreams...yeah, the way they tautened over and around and _between_ Sherlock’s buttocks, showcasing each round hemisphere. Bringing Lestrade to the edge, not just his flesh, though there was definitely more of him in his boxers now, but other needs, tumescent and troubling. Needs that had come out of hiding the day Sherlock had revealed himself and Lestrade had lassoed him into that hug, needs that were possibly not –

“Here.”

Lestrade caught the heart-shaped cushion, turned it over. A white flower on a sage-green cotton cover. _Rosemary for remembrance_. He nodded to Sherlock’s tender verso and set out to work, tugging the limber bolster sideways across the mattress and popping the cushion on top.

“Interesting.”

“What?” Lestrade tossed him another cushion. “I’ve seen you passed out before, Sherlock. Stole half the bedding, you did. And tried to snog two pillows at once, you wild kid.”

Sherlock glanced at the prop in his hands; scowled; lobbed it in one harsh swing of arm to the opposite corner, where Lestrade went to retrieve the castaway. _Bitter Rue_. Ah.

“And you’d let me.” His pillow consultant nodded to the other dummy, a more zigzaggy line-up on the farther side. “You’d – accommodate me.”

“Always have.” Lestrade searched his gaze, answering the nerves and silver in it with his own constant brown. “Always will, sunshine.”

Sherlock did not answer. But when Lestrade turned back to put the finishing touch on his dummy double, he found that _Hot Lavender_ was now leading, with _Violets Dim, but Sweet_ a close second _._ He had to smile at this.

“There,” he said and slipped the last cushion, the dummy’s hand, where its edge touched the bolster’s head. _The Marigold, That Goes to Bed wi’the Sun_. Then he pulled the coverlet back, letting it flow loosely around their second selves, and switched off the main lights. Taking a step back, Detective Inspector Lestrade checked his opus.

“All right with you?”

“…Yes.” And Sherlock’s body, solid and warm where it had Lestrade’s back, answered for Lestrade’s unspoken, unquestionable meaning. Together they watched the summer night, summer-ripe, enfold the sleepers in its shadows even as it threw a silver lining on their embrace, while they reached out to each other under the sheets.

“Good. Now, how are we sorted for kit?”

And with that, they parted again, Lestrade to fetch the pocket torch he’d remembered to pack, Sherlock to dump his whites and reds for a more neutral camouflage. Soldiers on the watch, sleuths on the track. But then, that was them. That was – coming to Lestrade with a burning jolt of clarity – what made them equals, never mind that Sherlock was younger, posher, cleverer and a sometimes jackass. They were – how had he put it? Partners in crime, yeah. And still were, now that midnight had come and gone, seeing the last guests to their rooms with sporadic giggles and whispered goodnights, and Lestrade could hear Sherlock’s breath quicken across the silence, both of them alert for any crack, any splinter of sound ushering in a new presence in the half-lit corridor.

Until it came.

Heavy footsteps, judging from the sharper complaints of the boards as the sounds followed one another down the length of corridor, then stopped altogether. Lestrade, already positioned behind the thick-figured curtains, saw that the long shaft of light under their door was now broken. A pause, followed by a new sound: their doorknob was alert too, trembling a little. Lestrade’s fist tightened on the torch, though he knew it would take much less than a splash of light to clinch all their certainties. Just let the door yield; just let that tall shadow enter, eight feet of compacted darkness, and…

And then, the lights outside went out. There was a growl, followed a hurried thud of feet. Lestrade shoved the curtain away and raced for the door, only to find it wide open and Sherlock hurtling himself out of it, after the shadow that was already lost to the tunnellike darkness. Lestrade, fumbling at the wall, cursed after the two of them. Then tried the light switch again. And again. It remained inert, though he was fairly pummelling by now. No juice, not even a wandering watt. The Cynewald’s owner _was_ a stingy bastard.

The small torch yielded at most a finger of light when he switched it on, enough to see him round the L-shaped corridor and down the much narrower corkscrew stairs at its other end. Lestrade had to grope his way down the uneven stones, his progress slowed until the ground became even again under his feet and the last turn delivered him to a door, still open.

Inside held more darkness. He pushed into it, round the shadowy corners and shadow-ier masses his torch picked for him as he went. The Old Drawing-Room, if he went by the book, well, brochure, though right now it felt like being drawn into a flippin’ life-size Rohrschach test. Felt suffocating. Not the dark side of it, because he’d been through hundreds of night ops, in and out of doors in his years on the force. But the alone side of it. Him on his own, without a stab vest and the crackle of radio at his back and Donovan – and, darkest of all sensations, drowning all the others until he could feel his heartbeat in his throat, without Sherlock. Not knowing where his team’s better half was or with – _who the hell was that?_

Lestrade froze, his heart clenching in one hard, unforgiving systole as he took in the new shape. Human, its arms slighty apart from its upper chest so they gave him a simian crouch, eight feet of psychotic, poisonous restraint waiting in the dark. Awfully still and… _steel_ , the hollow boom of flesh to metal told Lestrade a moment before the punch registered white-hot on his knuckles _._ He swore, grappling at the enormous suit of armour before it could slip to the ground and do some more booming. Yeah, well. At least he hadn’t gone for a Glasgow kiss.

Sweating, he switched the torch to his other hand. If he was right, and this _was_ the Drawing-Room, then there had to be a door in the side wall. One that would lead to the corridor going the length of the house, parallel to the row of seminar rooms that had once formed the Great Hall where the lords of yore ate their daily roast with their servants and vassals. Later on, the Hall itself had been carved into chambers and antechambers leading into one another, and still later, a wigged and powdered Cynewald had given in to the new fad for privacy and ordered an entire passage so that each room could be accessed on its own.

Lestrade scrambled onward and roundward, and now and then bumpward, until his efforts paid off and the pale round eye of his torch landed on a doorknob. _Always target the knob_ , echoed in his mind, the advice fringed with the hazy echo of laughter and happiness for two. Only, the door wouldn’t bulge. The corridor was locked out – or he was locked in. And so was perhaps Sherlock, if the open door had been a trap; his brilliant, mortal Sherlock, now closeted in another recess of what felt less and less like a nice summer resort and more like Bride of The Overlook.

The anger was galvanic. It was the anger which made him deal kick after deadly kick to the door then, when that failed, grip the torch between his teeth and slap his palms over the pannelled wall, inch after inch until his hand was pushing into emptiness and a draught of air struck his face. A nook or niche carved into the wall, leading to – well, he’d just have to see.

And this was when he heard the cry. It was short and ragged, a mere plosive of breath that would have remained anonymous to any other ear. _Sherlock_.

He ran. Later, he would remember crashing into more and weirder forms in his solo tussle with the Cynewald’s ground floor: man-sized candlesticks, high-as-fuck chairs, one great big stuffed buzzard (“ _Peacock_ , Greg. Really, the wingspan alone....” – Sherlock), and so on, as he launched himself from one room with another. The last was the MacBeth Room and its green tapestry, then a huge dining-room, a pale archipelago of tables glistening in the semi-darkness with glass and immaculate white linen. And, struggling up from the floor with his head still angled and one hand on his face…

Lestrade grasped his arm, tugged him up, propelled him into a safe corner, then wheeled to face the kitchen doors, one arm raised in furious warning.

“He’s gone,” Sherlock muttered behind him. “Or she. I – couldn’t quite see.”

And Lestrade didn’t have to push for any further shamefaced admission. All it took was one glance at the swinging kitchen doors and another at the rapidly spreading bruise on Sherlock’s left eye.

“It wasn’t –”

“No.” Sherlock’s attempt at shaking his head was quickly curtailed. “That shadow was much shorter, your size at most, and I doubt _he_ could have faked it and run that fast. Unless…”

Unless the shadow had belonged to another chaser, another pursuer, and their main suspect was still in the run. There was no telling now.

“Stay here” – said in a tone that brooked no reply and got none, bare a sceptical shrug while Lestrade inspected the kitchens at large. They did come with a variety of exits and fire escapes, one of which led back to the upper floors, and they did appear to be empty. Thankfully, the three larger-than-life fridges and their freezers were not.

“Here.” Back in the dining-room, he manoeuvred a still dazed Sherlock into perching on a table edge, grounding him with small talk while he fished a clean hankie out of his back pocket and wrapped the ice-cubes in it. “I’ll say that for you, you know how to pick your crime scenes. Want some carpaccio next? Or a nice bit of butter?”

“My peripheral vision has gone all skewed-up.” Sherlock had turned his marred face to him and was blinking his high-functioning eye in way of demonstration. He looked more vulnerable than Lestrade had ever seen him, clearly hurt both in his pride and his best asset. “How am I supposed to stop crime if I cannot spot it first?”

“You’ll do fine.” Yeah, that had to be the relief and adrenaline making his voice a bit cottony and rough, though Lestrade’s hands were all gentleness when he tipped Sherlock’s chin back and directed his torch light to the damage zone. “Be great, like you always are. Good and great.” And it was the adrenaline and relief, surely, that made him push his own face closer and blow softly on Sherlock’s bruised cheek, adding warm breath to the warm touch. “Just, you got yourself a number-one shiner, sunshine. Want me to kiss it better?”

But the voice that answered him was frail and reedy, in contrast to the unmistakable outrage it held.

“Unhand that young man at once, sir. I have a flintlock here, and I’m not afraid to use it!”

There was an exasperated sigh, then Sherlock swivelled out of his – arms, Lestrade realised, before he slipped down to the ground. Lestrade turned, too, and gaped. The door to the corridor stood wide open in a flood of light, and in the doorway, pointing what looked like the great-great-grandfather of all firearms, was an old gentleman with a fleecy white beard, a magnificent head of white curls, and a smoking jacket over his pyjamas.

“And you are...?” was all he managed once he’d finished eyeing the intruder up and down. Then down again. And once more. Lestrade was familiar with smoking jackets, having owned one back when his wife had thought them “manly” and “classy” and even insisted on his smoking a pipe to complete the picture. But never ever before had he seen anyone wear them with red marabou high-heel mules.

The old codger paused at this. He pursed his lips, then lowered the flintlock to give his beard a contemplative scratch. “I’m the hotel’s detective,” came at last in triumphant tones.

“No you’re not.” Sherlock sighed again, though with less petulance. “Greg, meet the present Lord Cynewald. Uncle Rudy. Shouldn’t you be somewhere else entirely?”


	4. Chapter 4

“Wait. Uncle Rudy?” John‘s forehead creases in remembrance of things past, one sandy eyebrow wiggling. “I know the name. Something your brother said about getting back to old habits,  _embarrassing_  old habits, that day you…went back to detecting, yeah. Got it! He's the cross-dressing uncle!”

“Was. Sometimes, past habits are – just that.”

Sherlock’s voice is as steady as the long-lazying, late summer sun in the room. Brightening the white walls, the blue rug... the baby’s blue eyes, half-closed while she abandons her light weight to Sherlock’s arms, her feet tucked against the steady, solid form sitting close to Sherlock.

“Still.” John will not stand corrected. “Mycroft said –”

“Oh, Mycroft would say. Such a stuffed shirt, my brother, with or without the diet. He was glad enough to dress in a twee little skirt and pompoms when Uncle Rudy first took him to Balmoral Castle. And Uncle toned it down when he had to sell his London house and open the Hall to the newly bored. He keeps the…master-mistress part of him confined to undies, these days.”

“Bit of a shock, all the same.” Greg turns to call John as a witness. “I mean, imagine Gandalf showing up on your doorstep on a very fine morning – in camiknickers.”

“Yeah, that would be....”

But Mary’s smile brightens up from her own corner. “Ooh. So it _was_ an Unexpected Journey, all in all?”

“Right there and back again.” And Greg laughs back, shrewd in his love for his friends – his clever, hear-between-the-lines friends – and the storyteller’s prerogative. “Wanna hear more of it? Yeah? Well, then. The next morning…”

* * *

 

“It’s all one to me if you want to stalk my cook, Sherlock. Although his grilled tomatoes are well above suspicion...”

Lord Cynewald, though addressing his next-of-kin, still peered at Lestrade with undisguised curiosity. Lestrade did his honest best to look him in the eye.

“... Still, I don’t recall giving you permission to fornicate in the lunchroom.”

“Just inspectin’ him,” the detective inspector muttered. Then flinched, realising that might not be his best defence.

Sherlock, true to type, was going for a good offence. “Don’t pay attention to him, Greg. He shouldn’t even _be_ in the lunchroom. He was under strict instructions to lock himself…”

“Which I did.” And Rudolf Vernet, fourteenth Marquess of Cynewald, spun on his _talon rouge_ , graciously yielding right of passage into the all-lit corridor. “I locked the gallery. I do it every night, in fact; you never know who might wander into the priest’s hole on their way back from the loo. I hope you’re not becoming a fusspot, Sherlock. One every generation quite fits the bill, if you ask me.”

“Oh, I’m still in my salad days.” Was it the half-closed eye? As Sherlock moved past Lestrade to follow his relative, and turned back to flash him a look, the effect was just the same as if the incorrigible prat had winked at him.

But their host had caught sight of tonight’s damage and was now crooning a softer tut-tut. He dived into another nook, or niche, or stationary black hole, from which he emerged holding a pot-bellied bottle. Whatever it contained was very dark and, if Lestrade accepted his nose’s evidence, an even deadlier weapon than the ancient flintlock.

“Can’t allow that, sir,” he said, taking the required step between Sherlock and temptation. “Concussion, all that. Better not take any risk. Now, ice, if we could get some more...”

“Quite right.” And Lord Cynewald, now entirely reconciled with the prospect of playing mine host in the dead of night, tottered back into invisibility. There was a crackling sound, followed by a tinkling, then a glugging, and then the old man reappeared, carrying a tumbler filled with ice and something that smelled like a leprechauns’ locker-room. The ice hissed loudly. Lestrade felt its pain.

“Here you are, Sherlie. Black Tot Day, remember? Of course, we used liquorice when you came for the hols.”

“Sherlock, no!”

At least he’d been in time to catch the emptied glass. Though not Sherlock, who he now watched doing a wild pirouette, his long form keeling in and out of verticality until it froze; Sherlock faced him; looked at him, hard and true, through the tipsy sheen in his eyes, and tried to slap his own forehead in triumph. Lestrade dropped the glass, catching his hand instead.

“ _Grerg_!”

“Wha _’_?”

“Your name.” And Lestrade, sputtering in outrage, found the pendulum staring at him with those unmatched pellucid eyes, no longer silver and nerves, no; all velvety pupil and blooming, pleading softness. “Solved it for you. All you have to do is add another _r_ , then you can read it leftoright and rightoleft, and that way, you see, _it makes doubly_ _sense_. Two-way’s the key. They can’t mock it now. Or you. Hurt you. Never again, never.”

“He’ll be fine in a minute.” Lord Cynewald had gone back to fetch another glass. “No? Really, you won’t you change your mind? ’67, an excellent year for rum as you may recall.”

“Can’t say I do.” Lestrade found he had to pause and clear his misty throat. Rub a sleeve to his eyes, too, quickly does it. “I was only…”

“ _16_ 67\. It sailed back with Captain Henry Morgan all the way from Jamaica, along with two Spaniards’ heads and beards, pickled in a jar of it, the story goes, and a _very_ fetchin’ pair of earrings. I still have the earrings, but this, I’m afraid, is the last of its case. Sherlie? Say when.”

“Cases should make sense, too.” Sherlock was sticking to his line of thought. And the glass, which he quickly drained again. “Even this one. P’raps it’s a pal… a drone… p’raps it’s a two-way case, too. We’ll know when...when, when, when, when. When. Grog?”

“Right here. Let’s go and sleep on this one, yeah?” Lestrade anchored his arm round the slim waist and turned to their designated GPS. “Better get him back before he gets all blutoed, sir. If you could just show me…”

“Someone called me a Something Blue yesterday,” Lord Cynewald, lost to his duties as a host and conversationalist, observed. “Extraordinary woman. Seemed quite chuffed about it, too. Now, I have been called a Pink Lady in my day…”

“PINK!” Sherlock roared nostalgically, his two hands cupped around his mouth and the flap of Greg’s ear. Then tittered at Greg’s face.

“Take the trap-door,” his uncle advised. “Third wainscot after the boar’s head. (Remember that boar, Sherlie? You never believed me when I told you you’d come across a herd of them in your boar-ding-school.) It’s the quickest way, really; leads right up to your chamber. Just make sure you step out at the first floor, I don’t think my insurance covers the unfinished stairs. Good-night, Sherlie. Always a pleasure to have you here.”

“Good night, sweet lady, good night, good night.” Sherlock sang a few more of them in descending tones, towing Lestrade by the hand, before he paused. He retraced his steps and, to his companion’s surprise, leaned forward to kiss the old man’s cheek. To Lestrade, it looked rather like a dabchick experimenting with his very first peck, but the affection was unmistakable.

“Thanks for the coverlet. It is…appreciated.”

When he answered, Uncle Rudy’s voice held the tiniest snag. “You always loved that coverlet. Family needs to come first, Sherlie.” The old man started his clip-clopping shuffle along the corridor, not turning for his final words. “The family you choose.”

 _Family._ The word kept Lestrade company while he herded himself and Sherlock up the stuffy, secret little staircase that was wood, not stone, creaking under their every step like a centenarian ship’s hulk. Dark, too, though it no longer bothered him. The darkness was less of a threat and more of a photographer’s chamber, now. It turned the old man’s words into a crowd of brilliant pictures which showed so much of Sherlock, so much more than Lestrade had ever known.

In the darkness, he saw again the pure summer light and the open grass. Saw, too, the little curlyhead who had rolled in them at the peak of childhood. The boy who had delighted in roaming that crazy joint, Swiss cheese and mousetrap in one, exploring it until he’d known it by heart – and later, the summer days over, had sheltered it in his mind, making it his place. Palace, even: a sanctuary for his later, lonelier years.

Oh, Sherlock.

“Greg?” And Lestrade paused one step lower to catch the warm, puzzled form sagging back against his chest; to wrap his arms about him and pet and steer him and reassure him that yeah, he was still on the good side of logic in tumbling _up_ those stairs.

He saw how the elder man had loved and mentored the child, and how the love was still here – undercover, as it were. And now he understood what had puzzled him most about the case: the Holmes brothers’ uncharacteristic pussyfooting around it. If this had been any other posho resort, Mycroft would have had no qualms about deporting his chief suspect, then un-deporting him with a pat on the hat if proved otherwise. But the survival of Cynewald Hall depended on its good name among the rich and famous, and the B&B Debrett’s probably drew the line at mass poisoning. Or accusations thereof.

So Mycroft had sent Sherlock instead. And Sherlock, wonderfully, had watched his steps. Well, up to now: right now, he appeared to have tangled his feet together. Lestrade paused again for Sherlock to untangle them, and for himself to check out the racy graffiti brought to light by his torch, all the _Cook Was Here_ and _His Ldship’s Worth the Mount_ and naughty _Staff Meetings_ doodles recording a good hundred years of upstairs/downstairs shenanigans. Their room must have been the Master’s Chamber, he’d decided by the time they reached the landing. And the other trap-door, which Sherlock pointed out for him before they stumbled through an even narrower space which proved to be their…room closet, yeah. Somehow Sherlock waded them through their own coats and bags, across the floor and onto the bed for that last and relieved tumble, as they firmly dislodged their pillow stand-ins and collapsed side by side in helpless hilarity, Lestrade’s grunts a continuo to Sherlock’s high-keyed giggles.

Their breaths still catching up with each other, they moved closer, both of them wound up to endorphin pitch. The silk coverlet rustled as Sherlock stretched to lie full-length against him, and Lestrade echoed the soft sound, breath thickening into sigh, sigh into _yes_ when Sherlock’s knee tried to ease his thighs apart and Lestrade opened them for him. He almost cried at the jolt of sensation, the chafing, tantalising pressure of his jeans placket when Sherlock straddled one of his thighs and shifted his weight to the – embrace, because that was what it was, their hurried, horizontal wrestling. They rocked into each other almost harshly as the half dark became the veiled light of a very early morning, and the last emptiness, the last ghost of loss erased when Sherlock pushed his cheek – the good one – into the warm refuge between Lestrade’s rumpled shirt collar and his neck.

 _Like before_ surged in his memory as he brought his arms around Sherlock’s neck, closing the embrace like a ring. Only, so much more. So much better than a stopgap hug in a dingy car park, now that it was Sherlock rolling and turning against him; Sherlock, his voice, frayed with white-hot mischief, saying “I’m hard!” in his ear, repeating it again with a startled joy that made Lestrade’s heart clench, then radiate in triumph.

“Oh, you wonder.” He kissed Sherlock’s cheek, mumbling words of praise to thrill and swell him into more joy. “Gorgeous, beautiful, incredible – Sherlock, hang on.”

Sherlock did, with unconcealed fervour.

“No, I mean…” And Lestrade pulled away so he could look his bedfellow in the eye. The room offered enough light for this, silver with a touch of Northern gold which spoke of the morning-end of night: it was late enough for the dawn to inch between the curtains, through the breach left by Sherlock when he had leapt out of hiding. “Sunshine, we gotta wait!”

“What, another two years?” And Lestrade felt a sharp nip to his lips.

He licked them, bracing his heart againt the sly, vulnerable seducer. “You’re hurt. And you’re bashed.”

“And you’re redundant.”

Lestrade had to stifle a laugh at that. “Drunk, I mean. On some whatchamacallit zombie spiced rum. I can’t take advantage…”

“Greg.” And his name brought another tingle, whispered as it was against his bitten lip. Spoken quietly and without a trace of slur either. “I think you’re overestimating the risk factors and” – the whisper faltered just a little, as Sherlock turned his head slightly away – “underestimating the failure rates.”

All right then. Perhaps not completely Williamed – if he’d ever been. But making as much rotten sense if he thought this was still about putting on a show. Lestrade covered the good cheek with his hand, willing it to touch whatever shame and self-doubt lurked there, deep down under the warm flesh and the smart wording, as he bent forward to make his point. It came out rougher than he’d meant, mottled with the old Somerset burr that resurfaced in his tenser hours, but he pushed it on.

“Fuck the game. Yeah, you heard me. Bugger it well and good, Sherlock. Because, you know what? We’re not scoring points off each other. Not now, not when it’s you and me. So I don’t give a rat’s how far we go, or who’s the faster shot, look Ma, no hands.” Lestrade paused, smiling when Sherlock’s mouth tilted up tentatively in response. “Just, let’s make it our go. If you’re sure...”

The kiss cut him off, its hesitancy only physical as Sherlock’s mouth trailed over his chin – now raspy from the long night hours, a long-forgotten sensation under the softer lips – and pressed itself, half-open and moist, seeking the intimate contact of tongues and teeth. Lestrade gave it to him, gave him his lap as Sherlock straddled him again, plucking at his shirt. They fumbled with each other’s clothes, their kissing breathier, sloppier.

“Talk to me.”

He’d almost missed the low-voiced plea, lost as he was in the unfamiliar sensation of Sherlock, naked to the waist, all hard warm planes against his own chest. He tried to speak, to channel praise and encouragement, but Sherlock bucked against him, not quite playfully, and his words melted into the heat. Head swirling, every sensation tapering into that one sharp pulse at the root of his cock, he felt his companion scuttle closer, then push one hand down between them to open his own trousers, the back of his fingers hard and eager against Lestrade’s swollen groin.

Not yet, Lestrade told himself, not fucking _yet_. He clamped down on the pulse, forcing himself to draw back a bit. The cool air tickled the space between them as he looked down at Sherlock’s hand.

“Jesus God,” he whispered, not caring if the word came hoarse, or hungry, or an unholy plea. “Just lookit you. Because I can, and I’m about to come just from the sight of you.” He paused to run his hand down Sherlock’s forearm, then again, to feel it judder under his palm as Sherlock began to stroke himself in rough, relentless motions.

“Or I could do it for you,” he whispered. “Have you trickle all over the back of my hand, all sweet and hot. Christ, but I’d love that. You?”

He knew from Sherlock’s moan that he would. His hand drooped around Sherlock’s and he tightened his hold, relishing how Sherlock’s cock grew heavier and more slippery under their joint upthrusts. His next words were a whisper, lovingly coarse, dipped in the burr which now added extra friction to the hot air.

“Or I’ll give you my mouth. Give you more, if it’s more you need. Think you’d like that? Me tonguing you, just little sucks up and down your lovely cock, or it can be one long hard suck if you want. Anything, anything. Because I’ll never want not to, Sherlock.”

It had been so long since anyone'd let him take the lead in bed: he’d forgotten how heady it was, how irresistible, both the giving and the directing; all the headier when it was Sherlock’s hand going still under his, Sherlock’s _Please_ – ah! – moist and hurried from his throat. Lestrade gave him another kiss, then scrambled down the bed, kicking the silk coverlet behind him as he did. Sherlock was wriggling out of his trousers, then his briefs, which Lestrade helped him push farther down his thighs, marveling cloudily at their white cotton – a far cry from the fastidious silk he’d expected, and so, so much more arousing. The hot rush of tenderness carried his next motion, as he lifted the long taut legs to rest them on his shoulders, bent his head to kiss the soft space beneath Sherlock’s exposed balls.

He made his promise good, sucking little kisses along the hard length before he touched his tongue to the head, a saltier kiss, and took Sherlock’s cock whole into his mouth, Sherlock’s moaning tumescent over his head. It brought back the past he had almost erased from himself, the rogue days before his marriage, when his life hadn’t fossilised into one duty after another. Now he played his tongue on the hard cock; lapped and tip-teased and massaged, and exulted in the magnificent rutting of Sherlock’s thighs around his neck as Lestrade searched new touches, small peaks of burning pleasure. _Taking him places he’s never been_ , he thought with a jolt of anger at whoever had been with Sherlock in his beginner’s days.

Then the hand on his head grabbed his hair and tugged.

Oh. Alone up there on his peaks, was he? Well, he no longer had to be, not for this, this, his – _little fall_ , Lestrade thought as he scrambled up to embrace him again. Sherlock found his mouth and kissed him, hard and clumsy, and Lestrade bucked against him in answer.

“Gotcha,” he said and closed his eyes, their lovemaking too dizzy for any clarity of thought or speech. “Don’ leggo,” came next. Came of itself while they were already falling together. “Never let go of me, love.” And that was it, Sherlock’s brilliant gasp in the dawn, but as he opened his eyes, his final vision wasn’t of Sherlock’s face. No, he was looking at Sherlock’s hand grabbing the headboard and the flash of light as they came in long, hot, dishevelled strands over each other’s thighs and bellies: the morning light, caught in the gold on Sherlock’s finger.


	5. Chapter 5

“What do you mean, the next _late_ morning?” John’s surprise follows hot on Greg’s self-edit. “He let you oversleep? On a case? Nope. Not Sherlock. Not the man who had Mrs Hudson come up and sing ‘I am the sexy Lola’ through my keyhole after I’d said nothing would budge me out of bed.”

“Yeah, well…”

“We had _three_ hours’ sleep,” Sherlock confides to the baby over her lightweight snores. He pauses a little, bending his head to hers, then nods gravely. “My very thoughts. Who needs more, when there’s a nice sun out there and a grown-up to wake up and be annoying to? I was the grown-up, incidentally.”

“The heck you were.”

“Was, too.” Sherlock pinches Greg’s sartorius muscle with the ease of the born anatomist.

“All I said was ‘Me for brekkie’. The way you carried on, England was going to curl up in a corner and die if we didn’t box the case before my first cuppa.”

“Which is why we first went to the kitchens.”

“Which is why you had us take a roundabout and enter the kitchen by way of the dumbwaiter lift. The sous-chef had to be revived with salt.”

Nurse Watson flinches visibly. “Ammo salts, you mean?”

“No, salt salts. He threw it over his left shoulder.” Greg mimicks the gesture. “Superstitious fellow, the sous-chef.”

“So the chef _had_ bolted off?”

“If only,” Greg sighs darkly. “No, we were told that he’d just been seen…”

“…. herding the cookie crowd once more to the light. I prised Greg off the coffee urn, and we both directed our steps toward Measure for Measure. Sadly, there had been a slight change in the room planning overnight. Instead of Gustav and his Gustavists, we found the – what _were_ those people called, Greg?”

“The Feng Chic Followers. _Fang_ chic, I say. They fell upon us with teeth and claws – still foaming at the mouth about the vandal who’d come in the night and spoiled their work in the Drawing-Room. Thrown the chairs about, left the wrong door open and bitched with their ch’i by kicking the Iron Protector – bloody suit of armour, that would be – off-centre. So they’d been given Measure as a new playground.”

“Oh, you poor thing!” Mary has to borrow John’s handkerchief to wipe her eyes. Then John's. “Did you handcuff yourself to the yang corner?”

“Nah, Sherlock told them we were on the case and we backtracked into the corridor. I said we should find his uncle and fill him in. I mean, I know what staff hiring’s like these days, have to share my gopher with Gregson and _he_ ’s the one who wants his dry cleaning…”

“Uh, Greg. Mate. Bit off-centre there.”

“Yeah, right. Sherlock said the case must go on, and he walked straight to the next door, and…”

“Leading to the Macbeth Room?” By now, the Watsons have managed a rather impressive pop-art reconstruction of the Cynewald using exclusively beer mats, the baby’s bottle (for the tower) and a few cheese crackers.

“The Macbeth, yeah. Which - proved the exception to the rule.”

“Meaning…”

“Yyyyeee-ah.” Greg lets the vowel slide on a heavy breath-out and pauses to fill his lungs again. “Meaning that we opened the door and found ourselves staring at Doctor Sam and her charges, back in their old haunts. Well, half-staring in Sherlock’s case. He still had his black eye, after all.”

 

* * *

 

“Bill.” And Lestrade knew that preliminary quiet in Sam’s voice. Knew it from half a lifetime of listening to vice squads, child protection, search teams or sworn-in therapists, and knew trouble was brewing when she bypassed Sherlock’s breezy “Oops, wrong number!” with her own “Come inside and close the door behind you, please.”

Greg did, ignoring the choral rumble of “In his face” and “Shame!” as he walked into their shocked gazes. He counted twelve men and women, all sitting around the customary teapot and cups (no cake today), and almost groaned at the full-arsed irony of it. Even the hunters on the tapestries had eyes that followed him implacably from their shadowy recesses. Only Maisie Fisher, in a pony tail and a green cardigan, waved at him.

“Sorry, no can do,” Sherlock was saying from the door. Dropping his Bill persona faster than broccoli off a kid’s fork. Which was a good thing, because Lestrade wasn’t too sure he still had it in him to address Sherlock by his nom de toff, not after – wait, Sherlock was still speaking.

“…smashing success, really, all dams broken, all to Greg’s credit as he made sure we connected deeply last night. His manual stimulation…oh, but you don’t want to hear about that. And now, if you’ll just excuse us –”

One day, if he was very, very lucky in being still alive to do so, Lestrade would sit his consulting _chéri_ down – on his lap, if needs be – and open his own workshop about Internet forums and how to quote them and, more importantly, when.

“I’m excusin’ no creep.” This from the formidable-looking gent, Australia’s former superbantamweight champ - whatever that was - who had confessed to a few anger issues the day before. A Mr Doily, though Lestrade, now flexing his muscle groups on the sly, guessed it was really spelled D’Oylee.

“He said Bill never looked at him,” came from the woman sitting next to Kiwi Fisher, who sported her usual arseholier-than-thou face. “Nice way of making sure he’ll never look at somebody else!”

Doctor Sam held her hand up, but the ruckus only subsided fractionally. Already a few among the braver sheep were pacing the battlefield and side-stepping Lestrade, intent on forming a bodyguard around Sherlock. Sherlock, who…looked over at Lestrade for enlightenment.

“Your bloody cheek,” Greg told him, for once speaking literally.

“Oh, that.” Sherlock dismissed the epithet by undulating his left hand airily from the wrist down. Lestrade thought he could spot a family trait. “That’s nothing. Mere periorbital haematoma. I walked into a door.”

The hissing grew almost solid-like.

“What? I did! I –”

 _Getting there_ , Lestrade thought, watching Sherlock’s long form stiffen and his eyes cloud up with disbelief. _Cloud before storm_ came next, then _You poor bastards_ when Sherlock finally, dangerously, did as he was told and crossed into the room.

Because while Lestrade, like the infamous kitchen door, might swing both ways, he'd never ever take a swing at Sherlock and they both knew it. Not when the last time he’d pulled his shoulder back, same as he and thirty other young sweats had been taught at Hendon ( _Hard as you can, lads! No slackers, now!_ ) had been to sling his arm round Sherlock’s neck and gather him to his chest. Which he’d do it again, given a chance. Or two. For the sweetness of it, and because half of him  was still in the Master’s Chamber, savouring that soft, sweet minute when he had waken up duveted in silk and Sherlock.

“They think you – hurt me. You. They think _you_ hurt me?”

Lestrade, not wanting to dig the poor sods further in, waved his hand philosophically. 

“Nonsense,” Maisie chirped in, her smile a sudden flashback to Mrs Hudson in her zany, colourful wisdom. “Of course he didn’t. He’s all heart and law, your Greg – and, oh my, such a mango afterglow!”

“Mother, _please_.”

But Sherlock had already slammed the door. A few Samaritans hunched back, clutching their teacups as their protégé stormed up to the table.

“I’m not patient with stupidity,” Sherlock announced through gritted teeth. “Or bullies, as I thought I had amply demonstrated. In fact, if anyone here doubts my physical strength…” His gaze swept the table until it rested on the tea-tray. Next thing anyone knew, Sherlock had seized the sugar-tongs and was bending them into a new curve.

“Bill…” Lestrade had to admire Sam’s effort to keep order and reason on the agenda while keeping an eye on the teapot. “That’s silver.”

“Oh.” And Sherlock frowned, dropping his first witness for the defence. “Very well, then. I’ll set a few things straight instead.”

He turned and held out his hand. Lestrade took it, stepping forward hesitantly, only for Sherlock to twist and pivot until two of Lestrade’s fingers were resting on the inside of his wrist.

His next words were just as unexpected.

“When I don’t look at you –” Sherlock halted, and Lestrade, still holding his hand, felt the fast surge of blood as it turned its course to the secret entrance of Sherlock’s heart.

“When I don’t look at you, Greg, is when I know that I’m hurting you. As I have before, to my everlasting regret. And as I may again, because we both know each other too well by now to hope that I’ll ever redeem some of my ways, even for you. Yet every time you have forgiven me. And that in itself should be the wonder, more than any... official miracle between us, but it isn’t. Because a wonder is out of the ordinary and with you, Greg, forgiveness comes every day. Because you never take my falls, my stupidity and cruelty, never take them for given.”

Lestrade tried to speak, to mouth something back. He squeezed the slim wrist instead.

“And I no longer can,” Sherlock murmured. “I no longer have that option, Greg. You took it from me the moment I came back six months ago, hoping against every hope that you’d claim me. Which you did, the moment you saw me.” He paused again, breathing fiercely through that turned-up nose Lestrade had seen turn up more often than not at his crime scenes, a sight to be treasured. “Today, I want to hope you'll allow me to become a better man at your side, in many days to come. Your, ah. Your. Ummmm. Your partner in time.”

* * *

 

“Oh, _Sherlock_.”

“I did say to leave the speech out, Greg.”

“Nope. You owed me one, pardner. Remember the Waters debacle?”

“Wait, he actually made a pun? Sherlock did?”

“In public, too. Could a bloke feel more claimed?”

“Mycroft must have quashed a solitary tear in his eagle’s nest.”

“John, stop being obscene. Mary, stop adding to the sodium layer. Greg –”

“Yeah, I’d best stop here, I s’ppose.”

“Oh no, you don’t. Not unless you want me to take up the tale and explain in slow, excruciating details to John and Mary how you stupidly  _stupid_ –”

“M-wee?”

“…Yeah, better stick to the child-friendly version. So, when everyone had stopped clapping and the Australian champ had finished mangling our joined hands, and Doctor Sam had kindly suggested that we buy a plant, and then a cat, and perhaps grow earthworm compost to remember that caring is a day-to-day challenge, don’t shrug, love, I saw you take a note on your shirt cuff, she glanced at her watch and…”

* * *

 

The night rains had cooled the summer heat, leaving the grass as green as on any April day: a fair match for the Hall’s rose-red magnificence. The main lawn before the mansion now hosted a large trestle table draped in white cloth and garnished at each end with jugs and glasses, leaving a mysterious empty place in the middle. Once again guests chattered in little knots of two and three, happily accepting glasses from the floating trays which circulated around them.

“And here’s my other Dodger,” Maisie Fisher called out as Lord Cynewald sidled up to meet them, looking very dapper in his beard and a dainty silk waistcoat which Lestrade suspected was only the tip of the iceberg. It had gillyflowers embroidered on it, and the quote ‘Every Jill Fair Within, Every Jack Fair Without’.

“Well, I’m not dodging _you_ ,” Uncle Rudy said. He beamed at her adoringly and Maisie smiled back, raising herself on the toes of her flat sandals to admire the lovely flowers.

“Drink, sir?” one of the merry-go-round waiters asked Lestrade.

He took one from the coyly presented tray, mostly to soothe the itch in his empty hand. He and Sherlock had been separated in the collective stampede that had followed Doctor Sam’s announcement of a surprise elevenses, and Lestrade had wound up hooked to Maisie’s arm instead. Taking a long sip, he tried not to scrunch up his face at the cheap acid tang.

“…wouldn’t take no for an answer,” their host was saying. “What could one do? Of course, the Vernets have always been known for treating themselves and their guests excellently well. Back in Queen Bess’s time, d’you know, the saying was: _Cynewald Hall, cake and ale for al_ l. My dear, is anything the matter?”

“It’s nothing,” Maisie, her eyes still shut, uttered a little gasp. “It’s – you’ll think me an odd fish, Rudolph, but I do get these red flashes now and then. It will pass in a moment.”

 _The chef_. Lestrade’s memory broke into life, red life, pulsing and no longer dazed from not enough sleep and far too little food. “Gustav! Where’s he now?”

The answer came of itself. For even as he spoke, Lestrade could see the immense cook walking – no, processioning – down the gravel path. He was a few steps ahead of his followers, four of whom were bearing a black coffin on their shoulders. Or so Lestrade’s sight told him at first glance, before the parade came closer and the rich, almost suffocating aroma of chocolate rose melted into the brilliant air. The cake was immense, too – thick as a slab, large as a tombstone, and of a brown dark enough to make a credible black. It smelled absolutely delicious, and Lestrade's fickle stomach gave a loud, longing groan as the monstrosity passed him by – close enough that he could see its sugar lillies, marzipan skulls, tear-shaped silver dragées and its crowning glory: the large R.I.P. squeezed out triumphantly in fondant letters.

“It’s a –” Words, twice in this hour of reckonings, failed Lestrade. Where was Sherlock when you needed him?

“Death by Chocolate!” one of the retainers called back. He looked familiar – youngish, flannel-pattern long shorts, square glasses which he now took off to wipe a smudge of cocoa. Oh. Yeah. The nerd who put crumbs in crumpets, or something.

“Gus baked it first thing before breakfast and had us work on it all morning,” Crumb-Boy gushed on. “It’s so very meta – us burying the weekend in style, as it were.”

“Well, me for _digging_ in!” a lady called pertly from the long table, where the cake was being given pride of place.

“And so modest of him, too. He wouldn’t even take credit for the concept. Said it had been offered up to him as a challenge by another guest, a challenge that he simply couldn’t _not_ take up. That’s the creative zing for – Oh, you total yahoos! Save a fellow a slice!”

But already the guests were zoning in on the cake. They shoved, lurched, jostled and dashed - all three workshops converging into one giggling, lightheaded crowd to where the men in black, the waiters, were cutting up the cake. The air grew heavy with the scents of rich salted butter and kahlua, and as the first slices were coaxed out of it, the cake showed its black heart: layer upon layer of pure bitter chocolate. It was greeted by a collective holler and more stamping. Only Lestrade held his ground; as did the chef, cutting a figure as tall as ever despite the midday sun’s best effort to shrink it, while his pale blue gaze never faltered, never quickened to life until it rested on another tall form across the trestles. _Sherlock_.

Sherlock, who looked – bruised, yeah, his face more defenceless than a face had any right to be. But then, Lestrade knew why. Knew that this, to Sherlock, was not a case like any other, any old ten on his private scale of entertainment. Not with such bastard stakes at play. Not when either way lay disgrace – because even if they were wrong and the cake turned out all right in the end, all right would come with a grievous cost. It would ruin an innocent old man, because who would think twice of summering at a place where, you know, _they had to send Scotland Yard to investigate the food_ – Christ. And Sherlock, oh god. Sherlock would end up losing his childhood sanctum and have to face Mycroft’s ire and all the SHERLOCK HOLMES MAKES A CAKE OF HIMSELF trashy headlines. God!

All of this flashed through his mind in less of the second it took to watch Sherlock force his gaze away from the coldhearted eyes and search his instead, before he gave one tiny, desolate nod.

Lestrade, his heart breaking with pride and sorrow, could only nod back and grope for his badge of office.

“Greg?” Maisie’s voice had gone thicker and Lestrade, bringing his focus back to his closer neighbours, nearly yelled when he saw the plate. It was held by Lord Cynewald, who looked only too happy to share his _droit de cake_ with her. “Have a tidbit? They’re handing it out now.”

“Don’t eat none of it,” Lestrade said, trampling over five years of grammar school in his agony. “Maisie, you – hold on.” He poked a none-too-steady fingertip at the slice, only to jerk it quickly back from the oozing texture. “You’re eating it?”

“Well – yes. Do you think I should bow to it first? In the Buddhist tradition –”

“Have some more juice,” Lord Cynewald cut in fondly. “Sweets to the sweet – or with it, d’you know, with the dessert. Lestrade?”

“Smokes, dear Rudolph.”

“Thankee, no – never when I’m eating. I must say, Gustav has really surpassed himself. I wasn’t very pleased with his initiative at first, why, the man must have launched a takeover bid on our entire egg supply, but –”

“Maisie,” Lestrade called from the depths of his agony, light and shadow and madness and logic passing his mind in quick-change succession. There was a pattern, and it was growing sharper with every remembered word, but he still needed the last piece to click into place. “Maisie, you have to tell me now. Because I trust you. And your gift. God help every poor sod of us, but I do. So, you and the cake. No red signal? All good?”

“Oh, yes.” Maisie still looked puzzled, but she gave a benevolent giggle. “Ecstatic, in fact. Greg, are _you_ all good? We should get you some water or squash – oh, and isn’t this a coincidence, Rudolph, because I was just telling Greg about his aura this morning and…”

But Lestrade was no longer listening. The last piece anchored in, the pattern bright and deadly before him, he was finally making his way to the table. Two paces before he reached Sherlock, he held out his hand – not to Sherlock but aside, with a blunt snap of fingers. It was filled at once, as he knew from the cold touch of china even before he glanced at the plate. It came with a small silver fork which Lestrade ignored. Instead, he plumped his glass down on the board and broke the tip of the slice with his fingers so he could stuff his mouth quicker.

“Not bad,” he told Sherlock, trusting the warm air to carry his words to where the tall monolith stood in his white apron, his white-blue eyes still locked with Sherlock’s. He broke another piece and waited until he had his mouth full. “Gone a bit coco on all that cream and sugar, if you ask me. Wanna bet he makes a mean custard?”

One more pace, one which would push him full into Sherlock’s space, forcing his partner to bend back and pivot until he was breaking the horrible, hypnotic tug-of-war. Lestrade took it up, waving his smudged fingers at the adversary. Then dipped them again into the cake, recklessly.

“Greg, what are you doing?” Sherlock was tugging at the plate now, wrestling it out of Lestrade’s hands, and Lestrade finally let him. Three bites should be enough. “Are you out of your mind? Why aren’t you stopping them? Why are you eating that, that...”

“Hush, s’shine.” And Lestrade swallowed. Pity – in his mouth, it just tasted like a pile of half-smoked ashes. “They’re gonna be all right. More than, in fact.” For the guests had now taken to chasing each other coyly over the lawn, and under the hedges, and, if Lestrade’s sight still served him right, into the Regency gazebo where a full-fledged orgy seemed to be going on. He reckoned. It was becoming hard to squint through the heat waves which rose like snakes from the grass only to shake the scene in a swirling, nauseating patch of brightness.

“He’s not interested in hurting them, Sherlock, only in testing you.” In the corner of his eyes, the big chef nodded once. “That’s why he’s not running away, even now, because he wants to see if you’ll get it right. He’s terminally bonkers, ’course he is, but it’s fine. Because we’re going to get it. Get him, before he does any more damage.”

“You’re making absolutely no sense,” came in a fierce whisper. “Greg, what the hell are you going on about? How can we stop him if the cake is not poisoned?”

Lestrade bent forward eagerly. This was a bad idea, he found at once; the good thing was that the table was close enough for him to seal the palm of his hand on it and stop himself before he keeled over entirely. It took another strain to keep his voice low: the buzzing, he knew, willed himself to know, was all in his head.

“’Cause you’re Sherlock Holmes,” he mumbled back. “’Cause you’re the greatest and the best, the only one in the world, and you’ve already solved this.”

“I – have?” Sherlock, who had caught Lestrade's head between his hands and was twisting it in a less-than-bedside manner in his endeavour to check his pupils, halted. Behind them, the chef coughed with polite but firm disbelief.

“Not gonna bolt,” Lestrade muttered. “Just go and tell him. What you said to me yesterday night. Tell him –” But he’d lost the words, Sherlock’s first, unforgettable words of love to him when he was still blotto on his zombie rum. Lestrade had to find them, had to – Oh yeah. Here they were, safely hoarded in his heart. “Tell him _two-way’s the key_.”

He didn’t wait for Sherlock’s response, or lack of. “Thhhink, shushine,” he carried on, pausing only to right his sibilants. “Bloke stands on lawn, is offered a drink. Bloke’s thoughts away, his heart’s not quite in it either, so he takes one absently – not looking – and it’s ten to one he’ll take the glass that’s just before him. Nice trick, that. Much less trouble than to go and poison a particular slice of cake. Only, it has to be the perfect murder, so what’s in the glass is only a trigger.”

“ _Absolut._ ” The chef’s voice, entering its first earthly manifestation, boomed approval.

“Not vodka,” Lestrade edited sternly. “Nor mango squash, like everyone else’s been drinking. Something way more acidic, so it will both enhance the drug and dissolve its last dregs, leaving few to no detectable traces. You’d know, Sherlock.”

“Grapefruit juice,” Sherlock said mechanically, still staring at him. “In and of itself a metabolic inductor for acetanilide.” The chef was still beaming on them, Lestrade saw. Would be distributing good points next, out of his apron pocket. “With another advantage, in that you can always top off its acidic compounds and trust your victim to pass it off as one of those cheap synthetic… Greg, who is the victim? Why aren’t you looking after them?”

“Th’other half of the trick is in the cake,” Lestrade said quickly, thickly. Hoping to distract him. “’S’all right. Not gonna hurt anyone else.” He prised his hand off the table, and watched it take a flying leap across the lawn, stretching to an impossible distance instead of giving Sherlock the love pat it had been missioned for. “More like the opposite – make’em bounce.” And bounce high, if he could trust the faunesque oohs and aaahs and the sounds of splashing behind his back: somebody had turned the sprinklers on. Grass, Lestrade thought. Plants, flowers. You never knew what they’d –

“St John’s wort. It’s blooming at this time of the year, though here it’s mostly known as –” Oh, they made a good team, Sherlock and he. Better than good. They even finished each other’s –

“Creeping Ragwort. Y’named it for me yesterday. Yellow flower. Nice. So it’s a –”

“Natural antidepressant, yes, but the impact of its altered proteins on the aniline substrate, taking into account sun exposure and… _Greg!_ ”

“ _Rätt, rätt. Exakt!_ ” The chef had begun to clap.

Symptoms, Lestrade thought. Must tell him about symptoms next, so he can complete his data. But why go all the trouble of speaking, when Sherlock’s hand had found his again. Would always find him, was Lestrade’s last-worded thought as he pressed the hand to his chest, letting the crashing, tidal heartbeats speak for themselves. “Get him,” he mouthed, and the shadows and lights slipped deeper into each other’s arms, and he could feel their tight, slender grasp around him all the time it took for his fall.


	6. Chapter 6

Waking up, eh. It never got old, Lestrade thought philosophically, but it did get woozier every time. At least today. His left eye peeped open, hurrying to close business again when the ceiling and his stomach began to pull at odds.

The long sigh brushed against his cheek before he heard it, followed by a lingering creak and the sensation that his bed had become lighter. A moment later, his cheek met with another touch, colder and solider. Lestrade scrunched his face in refusal, not daring yet to shake it.

“Water,” Sherlock said, his voice oddly clogged despite trying to remain on its best snappy behaviour. “With a few rehydration salts to rescue whatever is left of your stomach. _Will_ you drink, now?”

Salt. Yeah, salt sounded like a safe option these days. Pursing his lips around the glass, Lestrade took in a preliminary sip, then another. The water was surprisingly good. As was the light touch of dryer lips on his, as the glass was taken off, and the clean smell of wood entering his nostrils.

“Am I in –” But as he blinked his eyes open, he found himself in an attic room with rafters and a stained-window featuring a vast coat of arms. There was a leopard inside the coat of arms, and there was something else hanging from the rafters on a string. Lestrade blinked. Yeah. Definitely a skull.

“Lemme guess,” he muttered. “I can check out any time I like, but I can never leave?”

Sherlock, sitting at his bedside in a yellow pool of light, looked puzzled. Oh, Lestrade thought. He must have been out much longer than he thought, because both of Sherlock’s eyes were puffed now, and red-rimmed, and the light brought out new creases on the long face which Lestrade knew by heart.

But the afternoon light was still gathering…and he could hear faint cries of pleasure coming through the half-open window…

“He gave you an antidote,” Sherlock said. “Had it all prepared, he told me, in case we ‘guessed right’. It was our ‘prize’, he said.” He spat the words out as if they had been another, deadlier poison. “Lestrade, how could you be such a fool?”

 _Proof of the pudding_  wouldn’t go over too well, Lestrade thought as he mustered his own brand of sharpness.

“And if I hadn’t taken the bait, then what? That madman. What would have been his next challenge?”

Sherlock’s next words were hardly audible. “What if I had guessed wrong?”

Lestrade blinked in all earnestness. “I – never thought of that.”

He felt the old sofa sag again as Sherlock half-knelt, half-hunched down next to him, enveloping him loosely in one arm while he took care not to put any indiscreet pressure below Lestrade’s rib cage. The rib cage itself was fair ground, as Lestrade soon found out.

“You,” said Sherlock, poking him again, “are _not_ to experiment. Never again, not in any circumstances, not unless closely monitored by a more and brilliantly experienced experimenter. Do you hear me?”

Lestrade bowed his head, half in penance.

“I could have lost you,” came next in softer diction as Sherlock burrowed further between the blanket and Lestrade, who squiggled to welcome him. He wasn’t too sure if he should speak his mind, which was that he’d really known, well, sort of, more or less, manner of speaking, that Sherlock wouldn’t let him die. Because people didn’t die on Sherlock’s beat. Well. Not Sherlock’s people, anyway.

“That your bolthole, now?” he asked instead, stroking the flustered curls. “New number one?” When Sherlock did not answer, Lestrade let his hand roam lower, stroking his neck in slow, sliding caresses, round and round, until the shudders stopped.

“Look at me,” he whispered, and when Sherlock didn’t comply at once, “please. Look at me, bright-eyes. I’m sorry.”

Once, back in the days when they had first met, he’d thought of Sherlock as the little boy in Andersen’s tale – the boy who had caught a splinter of ice in his eye, and another in his heart. In the story, the boy hero laughed at humanity and fled to the extreme North, where he was given a jigsaw made of ice to play with, and a promise that he would be King of the North if he could solve it. But the boy had cried in the end, and been healed. And now Sherlock was moving, was bestowing upon Lestrade a glimpse of those almond-shaped eyes that didn’t hold a jot of cold between them, but only the clearest, brightest light, before he dipped his head again and began to kiss him. The kisses were haphazard; they fell on his cheeks, his chin, the side of his nose and the flap of his ear, but Lestrade, his face uplifted to the sweet manna, took them all. At last Sherlock kissed his mouth and Lestrade grabbed the chance to give back, turning in the grip of that strong arm to hold him close too. The kiss tasted of salt and forgiveness, as it would again in their life to come, and Lestrade took it up, moulding his lips to that unguarded mouth and wooing every moan from it until the kiss became a pulse between them, a bond and a promise, atoning for every past hurt.

“I’m sorry too,” Sherlock said when they both resurfaced for a bubble of breath. “I know, now, what it feels…” and that was when Lestrade tugged him back for another round. Sherlock looked a mess – his shiner turned a yellow-gold patch around his eye, making him look like a glorified pirate, his mouth ragged and softened by Lestrade’s consolations. “M’lover,” Lestrade told him, the old West Country endearment his mother had once used with his father.

“My husband,” Sherlock raised him, because this was what Sherlock would always do, and Lestrade would always let him and love him for it.

He smiled, closing his eyes briefly while the moment took and consumed them. His head fell back against Sherlock’s shoulder and he allowed his husband to rearrange them in his arms, Lestrade's forehead tucked under Sherlock’s chin. Time dozed a little around them. Then he thought of the others, Maisie, Rudy, Sam, all the people who had made possible that strange, exciting idyl of theirs.

“Tell me,” he murmured.

“Nothing much to tell, Detective Inspector.” This was a voice with a somewhat higher pitch. A squeaky-clean voice, in tune with the squeaky-clean man who stood on the threshold, pirouetting his umbrella with a tolerant smile as he watched them fumble apart. “And may I congratulate you on your splendid recovery. Of course Mr Björnson proved most cooperative, even before he accepted our invitation to – enjoy the Queen’s hospitality, let us say. Brother, here we meet again.”

“Yo, Mikey.” Sherlock was scowling.

“You pulled him in?” Lestrade glanced at Mycroft’s female sidekick, standing next to him, and struggled a bit more with the blanket. The antidote had been administered to his left hip, judging from the dull pain still radiating from that area, and no one had apparently bothered to pull his trousers up for him.

“My dear man.” The smile was stretched to an almost saintly smirk. “Björnson turned a party of fifty agressively disgruntled Londoners into a peace-and-love rally and nearly killed you without a trace, all with natural means. Of course we didn’t ‘pull him in'. In fact, we didn’t have to do anything except listen to his offer. He knew that we were after him, and he’s come to the point where temp employment has lost its, shall we say, vagrant charms? Now that we’ve passed his little test, he’s looking forward to a more, ah. Permanent office. He just wanted to make sure that his skills were duly appreciated.”

“He means the Government Chemist,” Sherlock cut in hoarsely. “Their top referee on, among other things, food allergens as the new biological warfare. I’m the reason why there’s a live-in poisoner at Number Ten, Greg.”

Lestrade squeezed his hand, looking over at the woman standing next to Mycroft. He had seen enough of her to interpret her stillness as anything but silent agreement.

“So dramatic,” Mycroft sighed. “When it would be much simpler to treat this as a case of _felix culpa_. We keep Mr Björnson where he will be of use to this country, you keep your detective inspector and Uncle Rudy keeps the Hall – with a flow of _raving_ guest reviews, no doubt.” He waved a desultory hand toward the window before turning to his companion. “Though he’ll have to hire a head gardener as well as a new chef, I fear. Mrs Fisher, shall I drive you back to London or would you prefer to stay here and see this through?”

To Lestrade, fazed out as he was by her mere presence at his bedside, it was oddly revigorating to see Kiwi Fisher direct her unimpressed gaze at Mycroft Holmes. Perhaps she _was_ a vicar’s wife, he reasoned with himself. Who doubled as a CIA agent when she wasn’t baking scones for the Mothers’ Union or getting the vicar measured for his new cassock. The vicar who, Lestrade remembered, had a bishopric in the pipeline. Hmmm. Judging from Mycroft’s half-repressed shuffle of foot, and the blush creeping up his stiff neck, he was in at least for an archbishopric. If not a papacy.

“Thank you, but no. I need to pack up first, and my husband will be here to fetch me in an hour.” The flat voice and the flat gaze were wheeled on to Lestrade, and he braced himself, much as he’d done in his punk-ier days when Ma had caught him improvising a mohawk with her best Elnett Satin Strength hairspray. “Had I known what you had in mind, Mr Lestrade, I’d have knocked that glass out of your hand myself. That was perfectly idiotic and quite unnecessarily reckless.”

“Oh, what? Like your attempt to race a psychopath through a dark and, to you, mostly unknown castle? What were you even doing in our corridor, spying on us with your little eye?” Sherlock, of course, would not look chastened.

Mrs Fisher ignored him and turned to the door, patting her vintage tea dress down. “I’d better go and take leave of my mother-in-law,” she informed the three men over her shoulder and – didn’t smile, because miracles didn't come that cheap in this day and age, but softened perceptibly. “I took every precaution to keep _her_ out of trouble, but it seems that your uncle has extended an invitation for her to stay on as his personal guest.” Her eyes rested momentarily on Sherlock. “Perhaps he will be so kind as to give me back my halter blouse in exchange. I am very fond of that blouse, Mr Holmes.”

“…’ways something,” Sherlock muttered after a pause, not looking at Mycroft. Who, perhaps upon realising that he was still red-necked and foot-twitching, was crossing over to where the skull hung.

“I see Captain Bolitho’s still here.”

Sherlock graced the peace offering with a curt nod.

“I have your foils at home. Did you know that?” Mycroft raised his umbrella into a horizontal line and gave the skull a prudent little cuff which set it swinging on its string. He waited, but Sherlock seemed unwilling to enter into a heart-to-heart about his summer years. Lestrade thought he heard the thin end of a sigh as Mycroft paused for a moment before the leopard window.

“Very well, Sherlock, I’ll be leaving too. The car, of course, remains at your disposal. Just leave it in Baker Street, or –” And on that final dash, Mycroft stepped right back into his complex twists and folds, his origami self, as if he’d left it hanging in the air until he had completed his memory tour. “Or anywhere else you like. Detective Inspector.”

* * *

 

“And that was that?”

Greg’s captive audience, now a closer circle around him – Mary sits on the rug, hugging her knees in her arms – asks in one voice. The evening light has fallen in the Watson apartment, painting the white walls several shades of blue, and the baby is back to sleeping. John’s arms are hugging his wife.

“That was that. Away he walked, his brolly at the ready, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

“Provided there’s a car and chauffeur to take him there,” Sherlock mutters.

“While you went and parked his Bentley in our street. Let’s just hope the bright young things aren't on a tyre-slashing spree tonight. John, perhaps you should…”

John’s armchair stands where he has dragged it, closing their circle on the right. John himself remains stockily seated. “Nope, he didn’t pull Mr Björnson in. Let him bloody well pull his car out.”

“We’re glad we could find you home,” Greg tells Mary. “And see the littl’un. It just felt right, sharing this with you.”

He doesn’t elaborate and she doesn’t ask him to, each increasing their fund of mutual understanding. There is very little Sherlock has told Greg about the Watsons, but Greg, who has lived and learnt through one marriage, can read the signs. There is more than forgiveness in the pattern made by John’s hand and the quiet curve of Mary’s shoulder, just as there is more than routine when John rises at last and Mary one-handedly tosses him her mobile.

“Not the pizzeria, dear. This calls for celebration. Champagne, if Greg’s stomach can take it?”

“Greg’s stomach,” Greg says fervently, “will take _anything_ on the cards. I’m starving.”

“Uncle Rudy conveniently forgot to pack us a snack,” Sherlock explains. “But he did say we were welcome at the Hall anytime, and he would embroider us another cushion as amends for his cook’s indiscretion. Once he found the right quotes.”

“ _Out of this nettle, danger, grows safety_ ,” Mary says with a secret wink to little Matilda.

“ _Bold oxlips_ ,” John offers more unexpectedly.

“Me, I’m rooting for _Grerg & Sherlie_. And yeah, we might take him at his word and come back next month. Because, to quote His Lordship, Cynewald Hall doesn’t cater only for seminars and workshops, d’you know. So…if you guys will do us the honour?”

“Definitely champagne,” Mary tells little Matilda, who is growing concerned about her own feel-good bottle. She swings the baby up on her hip again. “And then, if we’re lucky… perhaps they’ll even tell us the whole story !”

FINIS

(Edit: Now with a short sequel and another mystery for Lord C. and the boys to crack: [The Vernet Ritual](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3155408)) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is, in fact, a little extra scene that I finally deleted because it tampered with the structure of the fic. So Mary and John did not hear the whole story! But then, who knows? I've kept it, and I might post it separately some day!
> 
> In any case, thank you for giving this a go!


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